Guatemala Congress approves UN anti-mafia plan

Guatemala City, Aug 2: Guatemala's Congress overruled one of its committees and voted to create a UN-backed body aimed at rooting out the influence of organized crime in the government and justice system.

The UN commission known as CICIG will allow international investigators to work alongside Guatemala's public prosecutors.

Last month a congressional panel rejected the plan on the grounds that it would violate the nation's sovereignty. The party of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt from the Guatemalan Republican Front, or the FRG, led the campaign against it.

After the committee's ruling, the United States and Spain pressured Guatemala to approve the commission, which they said could help stamp out criminals' influence in the government.

''This is a historic decision for the country, something we have been working on for four years,'' said left-wing Congresswoman Nineth Montenegro yesterday.

The Central American country emerged from a 36-year civil war in 1996 and is now blighted by violent crime, powerful mafias and corruption, much of it perpetrated by illegal armed groups.

Some of those gangs are made up of former members of the security forces, rights groups say.

A few months ago, the interior minister resigned when drug gang gunmen walked into a prison and killed several jailed police chiefs, themselves accused of murdering a group of Salvadoran politicians.

''Congress concluded that without the international support that the CICIG would provide to the police and public prosecutors, we were on our way to becoming a failed state,'' Montenegro told the sources after the decision.

An earlier bid to pass a similar plan was crushed in Congress by right-wing lawmakers, some of whom argued it was part of a socialist plot.

''This is like asking your neighbors to spank your children,'' said FRG Congresswoman Lucrecia de Palomo before the vote. ''It's against the constitution.'' The country's vice president, Eduardo Stein, who has championed the formation of the UN body since taking office in 2004, has said members of Congress who opposed it were likely protecting corrupt personal interests.

Guatemala is a major trafficking corridor for the bulk of cocaine moving from Colombia up to the United States and some sitting congressmen and local mayors are suspected of working for drug gangs.

Reuters>