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US RESUMES MILITARY AID TO GUATEMALAN MILITARY.

Article Excerpt
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld paid a short visit to Guatemala on March 24. In less than 18 hours in the country, the secretary reversed long-standing US policy toward the Guatemalan military. He released a US$3.2 million military-aid disbursement that has been frozen on his government's ledgers since 1980. The reason for the freeze was the routine violation of human rights to which the army resorted in its execution of the internal war that formally ended in December 1996. But times have changed, the war is over, and the US now has other concerns. Rumsfeld said the aid was restored because it was needed to make the army better able to battle terrorism, narcotrafficking, and juvenile gangs.

The secretary answered few questions at a news conference heralding the belated gift, but the move played in the international press as a reward to Guatemala "for its progress in overhauling a military once blamed for human rights abuses." Despite the vestiges of that abuse that continue to plague Guatemala, President Oscar Berger said military human rights abuses are a thing of the past. "The shadows that plagued our army have disappeared," he said.

Berger said this...