Weekly Report - 26 March 2009 (WR-09-12)

REGION | Shannon visits. The US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Thomas Shannon, undertook a mini-tour of the region last week. The trip precedes a meeting scheduled for 30 March in Costa Rica between the Central American presidents and US Vice-President Joe Biden and the forthcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad (17-19 April), which US President Barack Obama will attend. The main message of Shannon's tour, which took in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, was bleak - that there was little the US could do for Central America in the face of the current financial crisis until the situation in the US had improved. Shannon did say, however, that the US would endeavour to ensure that the isthmus countries would have access to loans from multilaterals like the IMF and the World Bank, in order to protect social programmes and survive the crisis.

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