Weekly Report - 29 July 2003

Five Central American leftwing parties gathered in Tegucigalpa last week and issued a call for the 'immediate withdrawal from Iraq of the invading Anglo-US troops and other occupation forces.' 

The five were: Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, El Salvador), Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, Nicaragua), Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG, Guatemala), and Unificación Democrática (UD, Honduras). 

This comes as troops from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua are about to leave for Iraq to serve in the Spanish component of a Polish-led international occupation force. 

The five signatories of the Tegucigalpa Declaration are members of the São Paulo Forum. Two of them, the FMLN and FSLN, are credible contenders for power in their countries' next elections.