"How Mexico moves in the future, this is a matter for Mexicans to decide, not the visiting American Secretary of State," Powell told the daily newspaper Reforma, according to a transcript of his comments released Wednesday by his office.

"The American people, the American Government, President Bush especially, is prepared to work with any government in our hemisphere that is freely and openly and democratically elected," he said.

The newspaper was given an interview Tuesday with Powell in Mexico City, where he was meeting with Mexican Cabinet members and President Vicente Fox.

"President Fox and I touched on this, that maybe Mexico is going to be moving to the left as it moves forward. Well, we'll wait and see," Powell told the newspaper.

Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the leftleaning Democratic Revolution Party, for more than a year has led voter preference polls for the 2006 presidential elections.

López Obrador, whom some have compared to populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, portrays himself as a champion of the poor, and has laid out a platform that envisions returning to a more self-sufficient, oil-based economy and a re-negotiation of part of the public debt, measures Mexico tried two decades ago.

The most recent poll published in the Milenio newspaper on Oct. 28 showed that 32 percent of voters would choose López Obrador for president, while 27 percent preferred Roberto Madrazo, leader of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, and 21 percent supported Interior Secretary Santiago Creel, of Fox's conservative National Action Party. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

"Whatever the flavor of the government center, center-right, center-left they all face the same problems within the society: jobs, an economy that grows, education, health care, housing," Powell said. "You do that, you'll get elected."