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.