Weekly Report - 23 December 2003

The Central American heads of government, summiteering last week in Belize, turned down the proposal by Honduras and El Salvador that they should all adopt the same kind of drastic antigang legislation which these two countries have been applying in the second half of this year. Instead, they just issued an instruction to their chiefs of police to `renew efforts for the presentation of a regional strategy of action against the gangs, to be submitted as soon as possible to the [Central American] security commission for its adoption.'