KEY BISCAYNE, Florida (Reuters):
UNITED STATES and Central American security leaders on Wednesday discussed closer ties in battling drug trafficking, terrorism and other crimes, including the touchy issue of whether military troops in Central America might assume police duties.
"The military is not the answer" alone to regional stability and prosperity, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told defence and security ministers from seven Central American nations on the first day of a two-day conference.
It is against the law for U.S. active duty troops to handle police work at home, but a senior American general said it was up to countries in Central America - a region with a dismal record on human rights - to decide what to do with their troops against terrorism and other threats.
Rumsfeld and other ministers, who pressed for closer cooperation in law enforcement, intelligence, border protection and responding to natural disasters, announced no decision on whether militaries should take up the baton against criminals.
"Each country will have to decide if and how they will have their armed forces support law enforcement. And, if so, to what degree," U.S. Army Gen. Bance Craddock, head of the Pentagon's Miami-based Southern Command, told the ministers.
RIGHTS CRITICISM
The Washington Office on Latin America, a rights watchdog group, quickly attacked that attitude as "old school - defaulting to the region's militaries to solve problems".
"Why are we talking with the militaries about combating crime? Shouldn't a different set of actors be in the room?" Joy Olson, executive of the group, asked in a statement.
Central America, especially hard-hit Guatemala, is recovering after 1,000 deaths this month from the heavy rains and catastrophic mudslides brought by Hurricane Stan.
Belize Home Affairs Minister Ralph Fonseca warned that crime could become a threat to tourism in his small country, but cautioned that if troops were used to battle crime it must be with "stringent rules of engagement."
Guatemalan Defence Minister Major General Carlos Villanueva said that nation planned a joint peacekeeping battalion with El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, but made no mention of any potential use beyond regional and international peacekeeping.
"We are going to try to have a (joint) unit at a battalion level," he said. "We need political support for this."
Some Latin American experts say Washington is trying to encourage more military involve-ment in fighting criminals - a touchy issue in a region that suffered brutal dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.
But Rumsfeld said that era would not return.
"Today, the dictatorships of previous decades have given way to democracies, and rivalries that once threatened stability are now past," he said.
"Drug traffickers, smugglers, hostage-takers, terrorists, violent gangs - these are threats that are serious. But our countries are combating them and, together, I believe we can defeat them over time," Rumsfeld said.
"However, it is clear that they can be effectively fought only if countries work together even more closely than we are today."
