Reuters AlertNet Lite - INTERVIEW-Guatemala's Colom to use army against drug gangs

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INTERVIEW-Guatemala's Colom to use army against drug gangs

05 Nov 2007 20:10:35 GMT
Source: Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Guatemalan president-elect Alvaro Colom said on Monday he planned to start an army crackdown to win back chunks of territory controlled by heavily armed drug traffickers.

Colom told Reuters in an interview that sending in the army was only way to tackle drug gangs controlling large parts of rural Guatemala, particularly in remote areas near the Mexican border.

"It's a fact. It's not just that it could happen, it will happen," Colom said, after winning Sunday's presidential election.

"There are cartels that have their own armies," he said. "You can't go in there with the police alone; you have to go in with the army like a war operation if you really want to get the territory back."

Colom said past governments had turned a blind eye to organized crime and that he was prepared to impose temporary emergency powers in specific areas to fight the drug traffickers.

Colom, a soft-spoken center-leftist, won Sunday's election against former army Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who based his election campaign on a pledge to deploy the army to fight rampant crime in the Central American nation.

Next door, Mexico has deployed thousands of troops to win back territory from drug gangs in a tactic that appears to be bearing fruit as U.S. cocaine prices rise due to lack of supplies from south of the border.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Mica Rosenberg; editing by Eric Walsh)

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Last updated:Mon Nov 5 20:10:55 2007