Thursday, February 8, 2007

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters): The United States and Belize, along with three other Central American nations, agreed on Monday to toughen a crackdown on violent youth gangs that have terrorized the region in a rampage of murders, rapes and robberies.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the new initiative included setting up a transnational anti-gang unit, to be known as TAG, to combat the gangs.

The so-called mara gangs, their members heavily tattooed, grew out of Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles. There are hundreds of thousands of gang members across Central America and in the United States.

Gonzales said the four Central American nations that teamed up for the new region-wide coordinated crackdown on the gangs were El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize.

Previously most of the attempts to clamp down on the gangs had been done on a country-by-country basis.

"These gang members are constantly traveling and committing crimes on routes to the United States," Salvadoran President Tony Saca said in a joint news conference to announce the crackdown. "This is a vicious circle that has to be broken."

The initiative is aimed at improving the police performance, the arrest of fugitives, international coordination and exchange of information as well as training and prevention, Gonzales said.

TAG members will receive FBI training and will have the specific goal of pursuing and prosecuting gang members who commit crimes.

Police chiefs will meet in Los Angeles on Tuesday to kick off the new coordination initiative.

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