Pubdate: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. Author: Michael Christie CENTRAL AMERICA PUSHES FOR U.S. FUND AGAINST DRUGS GUATEMALA CITY, March 10 (Reuters) - Central American nations on Wednesday joined forces to seek more U.S. funding for the war against the flow of drugs through their lands and seas to the United States. In a meeting with U.S. anti-drugs officials in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Belize said they would also press together for an improved exchange of intelligence to bolster their lines of defence against the narcotics trade. "What we want is that the region, with one voice, can ask the United States and also Europe for the help we so badly need," Guatemala's deputy interior minister, Salvador Gandara, told Reuters after an anti-drug meeting coinciding with a tour through Central America by President Bill Clinton. Clinton was the first U.S. President of the post-Cold War era to visit Central America since it left behind the bloody civil wars of the 1980s and moved toward democracy. With the conflicts gone, anti-drug officials say the porous borders and unpatrolled jungles of Central America have become a significant transit route for Colombian cocaine heading to the United States. However, Guatemala and Honduras have agreed to let the U.S. Coast Guard help patrol their coasts. But drug-busters say the damage to roads and bridges, as well as deepened poverty following the furious passage of Hurricane Mitch in late October could make interdiction efforts more difficult while forcing more people to turn to drug smuggling to make a living. The damage to infrastructure could alternatively persuade cartels to divert shipments through the Caribbean, rather than going by land through Mexico to the U.S. border, the Cayman Islands drugs task force boss, Derek Haines, said recently. U.S. anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who cancelled his attendance for personal reasons, was represented in the talks with the Central Americans by Robert Brown, deputy secretary in the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. McCaffrey's deputy director for supply, Thomas Umberg, arrived in Guatemala City on Wednesday night but skipped the talks to head straight to the museum-city of Antigua, one of the oldest colonial settlements in Latin America where Clinton was due to meet Central American presidents on Thursday. Gandara said a promise of further aid had been made during the drugs talks and that the fight against narcotics was one of the "most important parts" of some $900 million in aid Clinton is asking Congress to approve for the Mitch-battered nations. He said regional officials had also discussed improved air, sea and land monitoring and money-laundering with Brown and would press Washington for improved information-sharing. The country's Interior Minister, Rodolfo Mendoza, told Siglo Veintiuno newspaper that the Central American countries also intended to make clear their discontent with the U.S. process of "certifying" its allies in the drugs war every year and threatening countries it blacklists with sanctions. Mendoza said Central American authorities seized 32 metric tons of cocaine in 1998, 27 percent more than the United States confiscated in its own territory. "It's significant that just in Guatemala, we seized 9.2 metric tons and that with our limited resources," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Rich O'Grady