SAN SALVADOR, 13 November 2004 — US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began in El Salvador on Thursday a week-long tour of Latin America, including Nicaragua, Panama and Ecuador, to thank the region for its support of the US-led effort in Iraq and the fight against international terrorism.
As the only Latin American nation with troops in Iraq, “El Salvador is a strong ally of the global war on terror, and a nation that understands well the global struggle for liberty and democracy,” Rumsfeld told a group of US veterans living here after his arrival here.
He compared El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992) to what is happening in Iraq and stressed that El Salvador was now “one of the freest and most stable countries in the hemisphere and the people of the US take special pride in having stood with you during those tough times.”
Rumsfeld praised the courage of Salvador’s some 370 troops in Iraq — Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic also sent troops to Iraq before they withdrew them fearing reprisals.
Rumsfeld told of a squad of 16 Salvadoran soldiers who some months ago “came under attack by assassins,” saying the Salvadorans “fought until they ran out of ammunition” and, defending their ground, “fought against their criminals with their knives” until reinforcements arrived.
“In that battle several Salvadorean soldiers were wounded, and one, Natividad Mendez, was killed. The US mourns his loss, his family and his country knows that he’s joined the ranks of those patriots throughout history who gave it all on behalf...of freedom,” Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld yesterday was expected to meet with Salvadoran President Antonio Saca and his Defense Minister Otto Alejandro Romero. Later he was to bestow the bronze medal of valor to six members of the Salvadoran Army’s Cuscatlan batallion who on March 5 saved the lives of several American troops in Najaf, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad.
The US defense secretary will later fly on to Nicaragua and Panama before heading to Quito, where on Wednesday he will attend a meeting of Latin American defense ministers.
In the Ecuadoran capital, Rumsfeld told reporters Thursday en route to El Salvador, “we will be talking about strengthening the inter-American system, about peacekeeping and the role that so many of these countries are playing in Haiti, which is important.”
Brazil heads a UN peacekeeping and stabilization mission in Haiti, but its members have been complaining of being undermanned, since the 3,100-strong mission is less than half the original 6,700 member force that was promised for this year.
Margaret Daly Hayes, security and defense expert at Washington’s Georgetown University, told AFP that Haiti was “the most critical issue right now” for the United States, and that Rumsfeld planned to thank Brazil for its help in stabilizing Haiti after the fall of President Jean Bertrand Aristide in February.
Drug trafficking, terrorism, organized crime, gang warfare and how the region’s police and armed forces can coordinate to better cope with them are other issues on the Quito agenda, a senior Pentagon official told reporters on Rumsfeld’s plane.
