Clinton Envoy Visits Guatemala Trip Intended To Show U.S. Support For Peace
President Clinton’s envoy to Latin America met demobilizing guerrilla commanders and chatted with teenage rebels on Thursday to demonstrate U.S. backing for peace in Guatemala.
“You have our support in trying to make this transition a success,” Thomas F. McLarty told rebel commander Bernabe Salazar.
McLarty’s visit to a hot and dusty rebel demobilization camp in southern Guatemala was the highlight of his two-day stay in this Central American country.
Later in the day, McLarty flew to the southern coastal city of Puerto Quetzal, where he visited an elementary school. On Wednesday, he joined President Alvaro Arzu in opening a U.S.-Central American trade forum.
McLarty had been in his job for only a few days when he made his first trip to Guatemala, to witness the Dec. 29 signing of a peace agreement that ended Central America’s last and longest war.
“I think that it is good that the United States is concerned about peace in Guatemala,” said Salazar, 46, as McLarty toured the temporary camp run by U.N. military observers.
The camp, one of eight around the country, houses about half of the 500 rebels who will eventually come here to lay down their arms and prepare for a future as civilians.
Under the peace accords, some 3,600 rebels nationwide are to demobilize by early May, under the watch of 155 military officers from countries that include the United States, Brazil and Spain.
McLarty said that increased trade and privatization will help give the Guatemalan economy the boost it needs to pay the price of peace.
Guatemala estimates it will cost at least $2.3 billion over the next three years to finance the demobilization and fulfill the peace accords.
Under the agreement, the government promised to expand education and health services, overhaul agriculture and the economy, respect the rights of the indigenous Maya majority, reform the judicial system and demilitarize the country.
Some 140,000 people were killed in the Guatemalan conflict, most of them civilians among the country’s Indian majority.
On Wednesday, McLarty said that the end to Central America’s last and longest war has sparked an economic revolution in Central America.
“We are in the midst of a revolution across the Americas,” McLarty told several hundred regional and American business leaders gathered for the trade forum.
McLarty vowed to fight for creation of a hemisphere-wide trade pact that Clinton hopes will be in place by 2005.
Arzu said he and other Central American presidents would ask Clinton when they meet him in Costa Rica in May to include their countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which joins the United States, Mexico and Canada.