GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP):  Guyana Thursday accused the United States of double standards over human rights, saying Washington was guilty of the worst forms of people trafficking from Central America.

"We can't manufacture prosecutions and charges to satisfy the US government and if the US is being judged on the same standards as we are being judged, they'd be on tier three, the worst tier," President Bharrat Jagdeo said.

He alleged that hundreds of teenaged girls were being trafficked from Central America into "slavery" in the US, adding that the administration of President George W. Bush was peddling "double standards."
In its annual Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report released on Tuesday, the US State Department praised Guyana for efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and its continued public awareness campaigns.

But the State Department kept the country on the Tier 2 watchlist "for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking in persons over the past year, particularly in terms of convicting and sentencing human traffickers for their crimes."

It urged Guyana to "aggressively investigate and arrest suspected traffickers, and make every effort to move their cases through the criminal justice system."

Despite passing a law to combat human trafficking last year, Guyana has so far failed to obtain a single anti-trafficking conviction, the report said.

Six criminal cases were opened against alleged traffickers in 2006: two cases were dismissed, and four are pending, representing a modest increase from 2005, when three prosecutions were initiated.

The annual US report analyzes efforts in about 164 countries to combat trafficking for forced labor, prostitution, military service and other purposes.

Sixteen countries are on its top Tier 3 blacklist of the world's worst offenders.