Security, trade top Bush agenda in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 12 (Reuters) US President George W Bush will today promote free trade in Central America and the need for greater security against an upsurge in political and drug violence in a visit to Guatemala.

Taking a break from official meetings, President Bush will visit a rural farm cooperative and take an archeological tour of ancient Mayan ruins, to the chagrin of Mayan leaders who promised to spiritually ''cleanse'' the site afterward because they consider Bush an aggressor.

Guatemala is the second-to-last stop on Bush's five-nation, week-long Latin American tour, a trip in which he was dogged along the way by thunderous denunciations from his leftist nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

''The battle between the US empire and the great Latin American people is taking place again,'' President Chavez said yesterday in a speech in the colonial city of Leon, Nicaragua, a leftist stronghold during the Sandinista revolution of the 1970s.

Yesterday, about 50 Maya Indians from the highlands, accompanied by a leftist party, protested in Guatemala City. They sang revolutionary songs, some wearing traditional Mayan-style red devil masks, spray painting anti-Bush slogans on walls. They marched past the US embassy.

Worried about Mr Chavez's growing anti-US influence, Bush has used the tour to try to improve ties with leaders of the right and moderate left in Latin America, where the Iraq war and US trade and immigration policy have made him deeply unpopular.

BUSH VS. CHAVEZ White House officials accused reporters of turning Mr Bush's tour into a Bush vs. Chavez trip instead of concentrating solely on Bush's agenda.

''We didn't pack anybody else in our luggage,'' said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Persident Bush, on the first visit by a US president to Guatemala since Bill Clinton came in 1999, will offer support for Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, considered a key US ally in the war on drugs.

Guatemala will ask Bush for support to fight drug traffickers who have infiltrated the country's police forces and may be involved in eight murders of politicians and policemen here last month.

''Guatemala is in urgent need of helicopters and modern ship navigation systems to track down groups that have more advanced technology,'' Berger's advisor Richard Aitkenhead told Reuters.

The annual US State Department human rights report released last week highlighted corruption and impunity in Guatemala's security forces, citing complaints of kidnappings, rapes and murders carried out by police in 2006.

''Security is the number one issue of interest to the average Guatemalan, so we expect to cover that,'' said Dan Fisk, South American expert for the National Security Council.

Fisk said another key item for discussion is immigration.

Thousands of Guatemalans have immigrated illegally to the United States and Bush is seeking to gain passage in the US Congress of a new immigration law creating a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.

President Bush starts his day in the town of Santa Cruz Balanya, to see a US military exercise that brings together US military doctors with their Guatemalan counterparts to provide medical and dental care to people in poor rural areas.

He will push the benefits of free trade at the Labradores Mayas Packing Station in the village of Chirijuyu. The cooperative, started from scratch by a farmer named Mariano Canu, now ships vegetables to companies like Wal-Mart Central America.

Bush also will see native dances performed at the Iximche ruins, the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan people before the 1524 Spanish conquest.

REUTERS SB PM1142