MEXICO CITY - A body believed to be that of a Mexican lawmaker who had been missing for nearly two weeks was found this weekend, local officials said on Sunday.

The body of a man fitting the description of Moises Villanueva, a representative in Mexico's lower house of Congress, was found on Saturday near a roadside in the southwest state of Guerrero, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office told Reuters.

Villanueva had been missing since Sept 4.

"They are checking for a fingerprint match to confirm but all indications, such as the clothes he was wearing, suggest that it is him," said Roberto Camps, the spokesman for the Guerrero prosecutor's office.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent the army to confront drug smugglers soon after he took office in December 2006 and politicians have sometimes been targeted by gangs.

In June last year, a popular gubernatorial candidate in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was gunned down by suspected drug hitmen in a brazen highway attack.

Torre's killing was the first big political assassination in Mexico since the 1994 murders of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.??