Salvadorean president sees "unprecedented" crime fall

President Mauricio Funes Cartagena said in San Salvador on 5 December that his country was living an "unprecedented process" of decline in criminality even as crime rates were rising elsewhere in Latin America, and this partly for the truce that began last March between the main gangs, the Salvadorean daily El Mundo reported. He said at a graduation ceremony for 65 army and airforce officers that El Salvador "faces a unique opportunity to advance on the path to becoming a country with real democracy and peace." This "pacification process" he added was not just for the gang truce arranged by mediators, but also for the efforts of the army and police. The country's Justice and Public Security Minister David Munguía Payés spoke last October of a steady decline in crime in 2012, asserting that it fell more sharply after the start of the gang truce on 8 March and unspecified police operations, El Mundo reported at the time. Munguía cited a 38.4 per cent fall in crime in 2012 compared to 2011 - without specifying dates for the January-October period - and a comparative fall in crimes of 68 per cent for the period after 8 March. Separately El Salvador and Russia signed a security agreement in Moscow on 6 December focused on fighting drug trafficking, El Mundo reported. The agreement was signed by Munguía and the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov. Its provisions included exchange of information, "technological investigation" and training programmes.

Nicaragua, Colombia in peaceful standoff over sea frontier

Reports indicated Colombian ships remained present in Caribbean waters which the International Court at The Hague recently ruled Colombia should cede to Nicaragua to settle a border dispute; it was not immediately clear if Colombia was simply ignoring the ruling. Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said after the 19 November decision that Colombia would use all peaceful means to defend the rights of citizens living in islands and cays now surrounded by Nicaraguan waters, and he and Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega agreed on 1 December not to resort to force. Ortega told a military gathering in Managua on 5 December that Nicaragua would not seek UN help against "Colombian frigates" in its territorial waters but use "communication," the broadcaster Caracol reported, citing EFE.  Which resolution could the UN Security Council issue, he asked? "You only need a country to put a veto and there is no solution there," he said, adding there was no hostility now and the two navies maintained communications that were "serene, serious, without aggression." He was separately reported as saying, perhaps at the same event, that he had reassured Santos about his concerns over the fate of the Flor de Mar nature reserve now mostly inside Nicaraguan waters. Ortega said he promised Santos permits would not be given to explore oil in the UNESCO-listed biosphere reserve and that Colombians living in the San Andrés Archipelago would still be allowed to fish in Nicaraguan waters, Portafolio reported on 6 December, citing agency reports.

Mexico City has a new mayor, cabinet

Mexico City changed mayors on 5 December as the leftist Miguel Ángel Mancera Espinosa, elected in the July 2012 general elections, replaced the popular Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon of the socialist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). The mayor of Mexico City has the rank of a state governor. Mancera was the candidate of the Progressive Movement in the elections and backed by several parties including the PRD. He defeated two high-profile rivals in the former president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party Beatriz Paredes Rangel and the conservative anti-crime activist Isabel Miranda de Wallace, backed by the National Action Party. With his victory the Left retained its political control of the capital and enjoyed a very considerable political boost in the otherwise disappointing election. Mancera presented his cabinet on 5 December, a team including former city officials, former ministers and leftist eminences. The most notable appointment was of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, the capital's first elected mayor in the 1990s and founder of the PRD. Mancera made the researcher René Drucker Colín Science Secretary and the academic and entrepreneur Miguel Torruco Marqués Tourism Secretary, CNNMéxico reported. These were considered close to the former presidential candidate and former PRD leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had reportedly envisaged them as ministers if elected president. Other appointments included: Hector Serrano Cortés as Governance Secretary - effectively deputy-mayor and administrative chief - Jesús Rodríguez Almeida as Public Security Secretary in charge of policing, and Rodolfo Ríos Garza as the capital's chief prosecutor, CNN and the website ADNpolítico reported.

Eighteen or more killed in Mexico in three days

At least 18 people including teenagers were reported killed or found dead in suspected criminal incidents around Mexico on 4-6 December. Victims included three youngsters aged 15, 17 and 22, "executed" in the northern district of Lerdo in the state of Durango, and four women found dead in the district of El Durazno in the north-central state of Zacatecas with "torture" marks on their bodies, Proceso reported on 5 December. A woman and her 14-year-old son were gunned down at home on 4 December in the district of Bocoyna in the northern state of Chihuahua; the mother, Edna Delfina Rodríguez González, was an assistant to the senator of the conservative National Action Party Javier Corral Jurado. Another politician Miguel Ángel Torres, head of the PANAL (Nueva Alianza) party in west-coast Acapulco was gunned down early on 5 December on Acapulco's main coastal boulevard, the Avenida Miguel Alemán. An 18 year-old was shot dead early on 6 December in the district of Naucalpán outside the capital, Milenio and Notimex reported. a 15-year-old friend or relative of the victim was wounded in this attack. The daily also reported the arrests of two suspected kidnappers in the western district of Ometepec on 4 December, in an operation in which police freed a presumed hostage, and of three men found with an arsenal in Víctor Rosales in the state of Zacatecas. Items confiscated from them included assault rifles, ammunition, a machine gun, three cars and communication equipment, Milenio reported on 6 December.

El Salvador's gangs to "disarm" in 10 districts

El Salvador's main criminal gangs agreed on 4 December to a proposal to turn 10 districts into "peace sanctuaries" - apparently without arms or gang violence - in what was described as the second phase of a pioneer decriminalisation process that began in March 2012, the Salvadorean daily El Mundo reported. This phase was announced on 23 November by mediators and the Security Ministry, which were to determine the districts, so far unnamed, the website La página reported. The gangs were to hand over their arms there at an unspecified date to the chief mediators in the process, the former leftist militant Raúl Mijango and the army bishop, Monsignor Fabio Colindres Abarca. A spokesman for the gangs read out a communiqué to this effect at a meeting in a prison in San Salvador attended by the facilitators, gang leaders and an envoy of the Organisation of American States (OAS) Carlos Orozco; the OAS has pledged to aid the process. The gangs concerned were MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha, M-18, La Mao-Mao, La Máquina and La Mirada Locos. The spokesman, a leader of M-18 dubbed El Viejo Lin, said the disarmament would benefit some 900,000 people and the proposal was a "realistic and objective" step in the process to solve "the problem of violence" in El Salvador. Other gang leaders speaking at the meeting urged a repeal of anti-gang laws, which one said were too many and an impediment "to the continuation of the process." Nevertheless they thanked President Mauricio Funes and the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Luigi Pezzuto, for their collaboration so far.

Pact with government further divides Mexican Left

Members of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) distanced themselves on 3 December from the multi-party Pact for Mexico signed earlier by the party's leader Jesús Zambrano Grijalva, echoing the party's earlier reservations about a pact that included the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRD, its political allies and protest groups bitterly challenged the PRI's general-elections victory last July, alleging there had been fraud. The pact appeared to open another crack in this party, following the departure of its former leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador to start his own political movement. The Pact for Mexico, promoted by President Enrique Peña Nieto, was to facilitate legislation through prior party agreements. But the PRD's secretary-general and deputy-head Alejandro Sánchez Camacho stated in a communiqué that the party did not recognize the signature and its political committee would debate Zambrano's initiative, El Universal reported. The daily noted that Sánchez belonged to the National Democratic Left current (Izquierda Democrática Nacional) within the PRD, distinct from Zambrano's reforming New Left current, which apparently had more support. He criticised Zambrano for letting himself be "wooed" by Peña Nieto's declarations and said his signature was "in a private capacity" and had "no validity" for lacking the approbation of party mechanisms. Zambrano defended his decision to sign on 2 December as "a risk worth taking," Milenio reported on 3 December. Differences with other parties persisted, he said, but the PRD was committed to reforms in Mexico. "We are profoundly dissatisfied with the state of our country," with problems too big to be solved by a "single force or a single man," he said.

Almost 87,000 Colombians caught HIV virus

There were 86,990 registered cases in Colombia of infection with HIV - the virus that destroys the human immune system and causes AIDS - between the first reported case in 1983 and the end of 2011, the health ministry stated on 1 December, World Aids Day. A ministry communiqué stated that 7,991 infections were for the year 2011 and 93 per cent of those had been through sexual intercourse, Spain's EFE reported. The greatest number of HIV infections that year occurred in Bogotá - 1,609 - while the age groups with most infections were of 25-29 and 30-34 years, with 17.98 and 16.46 per cent of all infections in Colombia. The agency cited an adviser to the ministry as stressing the need for a "community response" and collaborative actions by civic groups to help curb infections, beside the state's promotion of "official access to prevention" and assistance to infected individuals. The ministry stated that infections remained "concentrated" among "more vulnerable" groups, particularly men who had sex with men. Separately, police arrested on 1 December a truck driver who may have "recklessly" infected some 50 women with HIV over several years while knowing he was HIV-positive, El Tiempo reported on 3 December. The 57-year-old who was diagnosed with HIV in 2006, may be jailed for 72 months on the charge of acting against public health. Police said the "50 or more" women he may have infected during his "uncontrolled sexual life" included a 16-year-old virgin whom he raped in 2007. Apparently that encounter first brought him to police attention.

Mexican parties sign Pact to facilitate reforms

Mexico's three main political parties signed the Pact for Mexico (Pacto por México) on 2 December, pledging to collaborate on legislative initatives and forward the agenda of structural and economic reforms touted by the new President Enrique Peña Nieto, Reuters reported. In this pact, the parties would negotiate initiatives before voting and consult with sectors in society when formulating legislation. "We have to talk to build consensus...as politicians we need to turn coincidences into a basis for reaching essential agreements," Peña Nieto said during the signature ceremony in Chapultepec Castle, the former imperial and presidential residence in Mexico City. The agency observed that fundamental reforms were suspended in Mexico in recent years as parties refused to pay the political cost of unpopular initiatives proposed by the conservative governments that ruled Mexico in 2000-2012; this halted cross-party collaboration in parliament. Mexico's interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong cited the first initiatives to be discussed in this pact as relating to an ordering of public finances in indebted states and municipalities and to fomenting competition in broadcasting and telecommunications. An editorial on 3 December in the daily Excelsior welcomed the move as "an excellent signal for society" and observed that "the first impression" it gave was that "the new government and...the parties really negotiated and offer a serious document with 95 more or less concrete commitments gathering many of the three forces' proposals" in the July 2012 general elections. The pact's implementation, it added, would depend on tax reforms that would "significantly increase" the state's capacity to finance itself, given the inclusion of pledges relating to social security. Spokesmen for the three main parties - the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), conservative National Action Party (PAN) and socialist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) - also welcomed the pact, expressing hope it would benefit Mexico. The PAN's parliamentary coordinator Alberto Villarreal said his party would not "deny our country the reforms needed for its advancement. We will not be the ones to impede Mexico's advancement and growth," El Universal reported. He was perhaps referring to the two PAN governments' inability to legislate reforms in the preceding 12 years for lack of support from other parties, particularly the PRI.

FARC rebels killed in Colombia, Panama

Four members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were killed and three arrested in army operations in two districts of Colombia on 1 December, Agence France-Presse reported. Three died when planes bombed a FARC base in the Vista Hermosa district in the south-central department of Meta; three FARC members were arrested in that locality. Troops also shot dead a FARC rebel in the district of Lejanías, also in Meta. The FARC announced a unilateral two-month ceasefire on 20 December while negotiating in Havana to end their longstanding conflict with the Colombian state, insisting however that their fighters would defend themselves; the government ruled out halting security operations before any agreement were signed. On 30 November Panamanian police shot dead a presumed FARC member and arrested seven in the Chepigana district of the Darién province, near Colombia's frontier, Reuters reported citing police declarations. Police confiscated "20 bags of cocaine" and an unspecified quantity of arms.

Crime violence continues as Mexico changes leaders

Mexico's presidential transition was no excuse for organized crime to interrupt its activities, and about 20 were reported shot dead or found dead between 28 November and 1 December. Ten "at least" were reported killed on 28-29 November, apparently in addition to those reported earlier as killed on 28 November; victims included the police chief of the locality of Cocula in the western state of Guerrero and a colleague, "executed by gunmen" late on 28 November, Proceso reported on 30 November. Two policemen were gunned down on 30 November in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, south of the western city of Guadalajara. On 1 December, five bodies were reported found around the north-central city of Zacatecas with messages from the Gulf Cartel to their rivals The Zetas. These stated that the executions were because The Zetas had not taken up "the opportunity" their rivals had given them to abandon the area, Proceso reported on 1 December. Four policemen were also killed or found dead in and around the northern city of Torreón on 30 November or early on 1 December, the state government of Coahuila announced. Another recently reported crime was the killing of a 14-year-old "bike-taxi" driver in the state of Morelos south of the capital, for unexplained motives. The teenager, named Miguel Ángel, drove passengers on a vehicle consisting of a passenger seat pulled by a motorbike; apparently stoned to death, he was found on 27 November in the locality of Xoxocotla where he lived, near his burned vehicle, Milenio reported on 28 November.

Youth protest as Mexican president takes office

Media reported over 90 arrests in the Mexican capital on 1 December during protests coinciding with the formal inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto's presidency. His victory in July's general elections was marked by fraud allegations and a rejection of results by many students and the Leftist coalition led then by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Public property was damaged in the protests, which the mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon qualified as unprecedented and including "acts of barbarism." Spain's El País wrote of moments of chaos in the capital; Ebrard said 65 of the detained would face vandalism or related charges, Europa Press reported. The website Proceso separately reported protests in several states and districts, as well as a 40-minute delay to Peña Nieto's swearing-in inside parliament for disruptive conduct by left-wing parliamentarians. Allies of López Obrador raised banners that accused the outgoing president of handing over a "blood-soaked" presidential seat - for waging war on crime - or declaring "Imposition Consumed - Mexico in mourning." López Obrador himself addressed supporters in the capital that day, declaring he refused to recognize Peña Nieto for his "illegitimate and illegal" election, Europa Press reported, citing the daily La Jornada. He said the new interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong should resign for the "violent" response to protests, as should the police minister Manuel Mondragón for not assuring protesters' security. The government also condemned the violence. Peña Nieto separately promised 13 reforming measures that day, addressing the nation as president, Europa Press reported. The initiatives he promised included: introducing a universal social security system, educational reforms, measures to reduce crime violence, legislation to curb debt in public administrations and state governments and constitutional reform to ensure a single legal code and penal procedures applicable nationwide. The president had earlier touted a Pact for Mexico wherein all parties would cooperate to push through systemic reforms, though it was not yet clear if left-wing parties such as the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) would give it their backing.

Mexico has a new president, cabinet

Felipe Calderón formally handed over the Mexican presidency to Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in a short ceremony in the National Palace in Mexico City, enacted just after midnight on 1 December, CNN reported. Peña Nieto later had members of his Security Cabinet sworn in at the National Palace. He expressed satisfaction then at the completion of an "orderly, legal and transparent" transition of power. Calderón hosted a farewell dinner hours before the handover, while Peña Nieto was to have a more grandiose inauguration as President of Mexico later on 1 December. On 30 November he presented his cabinet to the public, CNNMéxico reported. Among its most prominent members: Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, a 48-year-old lawyer and formerly general coordinator for Policy and Security in Peña Nieto's transitional team became the interior minister (Secretario de gobernación), and José Antonio Meade Kuribreña foreign minister. Meade was the finance minister since September of the outgoing conservative government, and previously served as its energy minister. General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was the new Defence Minister and Admiral Vidal Francisco Soberón Sanz the Navy Minister, heading a body closely involved so far in the war on drug cartels. Manuel Mondragón y Kalb was made minister for Public Security and Institutional Planning, though it was not clear how long this post would last, given Peña Nieto's plans to eliminate the Public Security or police ministry created by Calderón. Mondragón was a prominent member of the Mexico City government under its outgoing leftist mayor Marcelo Ebrard and the capital's police chief in 2008-December 2012. Luis Videgaray Caso was the new finance minister: a close collaborator of Peña Nieto, he served with him when Peña Nieto was governor of Estado de México, as his election campaign manager and then general coordinator of his transitional team in July-December 2012. Female ministers included: the physician Mercedes Juan López in Health, Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas in Tourism, and the leftist Rosario Robles Berlanga in Social Development.

President voices Colombia's anger at Hague ruling

President Juan Manuel Santos said in Colombia on 29 November that he was "shocked" and "deeply hurt" by the recent ruling by the International Court at the Hague that ceded chunks of its sea territory to Nicaragua to settle a border dispute. He told a policy event in the northern town of Apartadó that the ruling had hit Colombians' "morale" but vowed to use all legal means to ensure it "does not harm" their rights. This he said he would do peacefully but "firmly," without "shouting" at Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, whom he was scheduled to meet informally on 1 December, El Tiempo reported on 29 November. Colombia has reportedly engaged lawyers to design a plan of response to the ruling. Santos said separately in Bogotá that day that Colombia would not implement the ruling until the rights of Colombians living in the San Andrés Archipelago - the islands now effectively surrounded by Nicaraguan waters - are assured. Colombia already announced it would leave the Bogotá Pact treaty that gave the Hague Court authority to arbitrate between American states, though it remained bound by its provisions for another year. President Santos was expected to meet with Daniel Ortega in Mexico City as both were to attend the formal handover of presidential powers on 1 December. The decision to leave the Pact was criticized by certain observers in comments published by the daily El Espectador on 29 November. The jurist Fabián Augusto Cárdenas told the daily that Colombia could still be "taken to court" in disputes for another year "when the withdrawal comes into effect. In fact the cases that were already before the court will continue their ordinary course." An example was given by Ecuador's foreign minister, who was cited as saying that Colombia's departure from the Pact would not affect Ecuador's ongoing legal action over the effects on its people and territory of chemical fumigation of coca plantations in Colombia, near the frontier. The daily also cited jurist Mauricio Herdocia Sacasa as saying that while other states could not in the future force Colombia to accept arbitration in disputes, it too would be unable to take them to court. "Whoever shuts the door to others is doing the same to himself, in a world where there is always conflict and there will always be more powerful countries that will seek to impose their will. The Bogotá Pact is the innocent victim of this dispute," he said.

Colombia, rebels end first round of peace talks

Colombian negotiators and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) concluded their first round of peace talks in Havana on 29 November that focused on rural policies, and were to resume talks on 5 December, El Tiempo reported. The two sides began talks in October meant to end decades of internal conflict. Both sides repeated at press conferences the mechanisms the Conversations Table has envisaged for public participation and contribution to the negotiating process, including a a website designed from 7 December to publish communiqués and register public comments, and a debate to be held in Bogotá on 17-19 December. The two sides also agreed to seek the conclusions of consultations with regional communities organized by parliament in preceding months. Colombia's chief negotiator Humberto de la Calle asked the public to make "relevant and useful" contributions focused on the subjects of negotiation: land use or agrarian policies, political participation by the FARC, drug trafficking by the FARC and their disarmament and compensation of victims. The FARC negotiator known as Iván Marquez observed separately that mutual confidence had increased and the FARC would like to discuss an accord to "regulate" the "war" and minimize harm done to civilians. The daily separately cited President Juan Manuel Santos as saying in Colombia that "we are ready for peace" but there would be no ceasefire until "we sign the agreement of this second phase," presumably meaning the satisfactory conclusion of direct talks as set out in the talks agenda.

Over 30 killed, found dead around Mexico in a day

Thirty two people were reported shot or found dead around Mexico on 28 November, the websites of Milenio and Proceso reported that day, including two policemen. One policeman, reported as kidnapped hours previously, was apparently tortured before he was found hanging from a bridge on the edge of Gómez Palacio in the northern state of Durango. Another police official was shot in his car outside a hospital in the northern city of Chihuahua as he arrived to donate blood to an injured colleague, Milenio reported. In other incidents: in Torreón next to Gómez Palacio the remains of a "mutilated corpse" were found scattered around streets in the city centre. Three men were gunned down in a workshop and a couple shot dead while talking in the street that day, also in Torreón; seven were reported shot dead in different parts of the north-western state of Sinaloa, while a gun fight between gangs killed four participants in the locality of Huitzila north of the western city of Guadalajara. Marines were reported separately to have found on 28 November "at least" nine bodies buried in two ditches near a nature reserve in the west-coast district of Acapulco.

Ecuador's exiled ex-leader not to run in polls

Abdalá Bucaram's return from exile to run for Ecuador's presidency in February 2013 might have been interesting at the very least given his reputed antics and lively personality, but it was not to be. The National Electoral Council (CNE) approved a protestant preacher instead to represent Bucaram's populist PRE (Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano) party and compete with the incumbent Rafael Correa Delgado. The evangelist Nelson Zavala Avellán would run for the presidency and former legislator Denny Cevallos Capurro would be the PRE's vice-presidential candidate, Agence France-Presse reported on 27 November. The CNE rejected Bucaram's candidacy on 19 November, stating that he was not present at his registration. Bucaram was in Panama, and faced possible prosecution for charges relating to financial malfaisance or embezzlement during his presidency in 1996-7. The CNE also obligated Cevallos to renounce her parliamentary position to confirm her candidacy; she was the substitute legislator for Bucarám's son, Abdalá Bucaram Pulley. She told the Ecuadorean daily El Universo that Zavala had the "same political weight" as Bucaram and expressed confidence the PRE ticket would reach the second round. If elected, she said, she would expand the vice-presidency's current social vocation. The CNE has approved  eight presidential candidacies for elections due on 17 February 2013, AFP reported. These were, aside Zavala, President Correa, the banker Guillermo Lasso Mendoza, former president (2003-5) Lucio Gutiérrez Borbua for the centrist Sociedad Patriótica, the leftist and Correa's former energy minister Alberto Acosta Espinosa, two conservatives - Álvaro Noboa and Mauricio Rodas Espinel - and a jurist running as an independent, Normay Wray Reyes. President Correa was apparently ahead in voting intentions.

Ecuador's president reshuffles cabinet

Several new ministers were sworn into office in Quito on 28 November, amid a partial reshuffle allowing some former ministers to run for positions in general elections scheduled for 2013, agencies and press reported. In the changes the former heritage minister María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés became Defence Minister, her old post going to the deputy-minister for heritage Maria Belén Moncayo. Espinosa replaced Miguel Carvajal Aguirre, Ecuador's El Telégrafo reported. The new Policy Coordination Minister (Ministro coordinador de política) was Betty Tola who returned to the post she left in August 2012 following a disputed legislative initiative over military pensions. Rafael Poveda became the new Minister of Strategic Sectors (Ministro coordinador de Sectores Estratégicos), replacing Jorge Glas Espinel who was to be a vice-presidential candidate in coming elections for the Alianza País (or PAIS) party backing Correa. Other appointments were of Lorena Tapia Núñez as Environment Minister - her predecessor was to run for a parliamentary seat for PAIS - of Lorena Escudero to head the migratory affairs department (Senami) and of Leonardo Berrezueta Carrión as Private Secretary to the Presidency. Tapia Núñez was the acting minister since 12 November, while Berrezueta began working as presidential Secretary on 9 November, and was formally appointed on 16. Born in 1978, he was a deputy-interior minister for security affairs from May 2011 to late January 2012 and an adviser to the Presidency from June or July to November 2012, the government bulletin El Ciudadano reported on 16 November.

Colombia leaves arbitration treaty after court ruling

Reflecting Colombia's anger at a 19 November ruling by the International Court at the Hague that ceded part of its sea territory to Nicaragua, President Juan Manuel Santos announced on 28 November that Colombia would leave the 1948 Bogotá Pact that gave the Court authority to arbitrate in frontier disputes. Santos made the announcement at gathering of coffee growers who cheered him, and said the decision was to prevent a repetition of such a ruling. He said this did not mean Colombia was no longer committed to peacefully resolving such disputes as the Pact demands of signatories, but that in keeping with "the highest national interests" land and sea frontiers should be set by treaties "as has been the juridical tradition in Colombia," RCN Radio reported on 28 November. The ruling had meant to settle a dispute over sea frontiers, but considerably reduced access to rich fishing waters for inhabitants of the San Andrés Archipelago, a range of islands and dependent cays belonging to Colombia, which in some cases would become surrounded by Nicaraguan waters. There was also concern in Colombia that Nicaragua would later explore and drill for oil in some of the waters given it, which are now a protected natural zone. Santos said Colombia "denounced" the treaty before the Organization of American States on 27 November, which effectively meant it was leaving. The pact or American Treaty on Pacific Settlement, which entered into force in 1949 and was ratified by 15 American states, foresees a range of diplomatic and legal means for resolving disputes, including arbitration by The Hague. The decision apparently did not affect Colombia's obligation to respect this ruling and its formal departure would be in a year. But the broadcaster cited Vice-President Marcelino Garzon as saying that "an understanding and agreement" was now needed between Colombia and Nicaragua that would "favour the fishing population." He said the dispute was now "in the hands of the United Nations."

Twenty one reported killed around Mexico in a day

The review Proceso numbered at 21 those reported killed or found dead in Mexico on 26-27 November, mostly victims of drug cartels or of gun fights with security forces. These included a father and his three adult sons shot dead on a road in the Urique district of the northern state of Chihuahua, Proceso reported. In one incident the body parts of three men were left inside and on a car in the northern city of Torreón. In the eastern and western states of Veracruz and Michoacán respectively, the army shot dead eight suspected criminals in gun fights, reportedly responding to gunfire in both cases. Separately, authorities made a public presentation of six policemen held for their presumed role in the execution-style killings on 18 November of eight individuals in the district of Indé in the northern state of Durango, Proceso reported. The victims were relatives of the mayor of Indé Ernesto Núñez Rodríguez and included a pregnant 21-year-old and her four-year-old son. He told investigators that four individuals arrived at his property that day and began shooting at a gathering of 13 people there. Eight of those ran into a cellar where they were shot by two "state policemen" who followed them and who then set fire to the cellar. The mayor said five other relatives including a 15-year-old were still missing after the attack.

Teenagers among recent murdered in Honduras

The bodies of four "young men" were found before dawn on 27 November near the National Stadium in northern Tegucicalpa, hours after they were kidnapped from hostels in the district of Comayagüela north of the city, the daily El Heraldo reported. The victims were apparently strangled to death; one was 14 years old. They were among seven individuals kidnapped by a group of men, some wearing police uniforms. The three other youngsters remained unfound. Police were investigating to determine whether or not the incident was related to the killing of three youngsters in Comayagüela a week before. El Heraldo reported at least eight other violent deaths around Honduras during 21-27 November, including: a Cuban national shot dead outside a mechanical workshop on 26 November near the northern town of El Progreso; a land activist from the MARCA association, shot at the bus station on 25 November in the northern port of Trujillo and three 17 year-old boys stabbed to death in separate incidents in Comayagüela on 24 November, and in the northern port of Cortés on 22 November.