Salvadoran president sees "unprecedented" crime fall

President Mauricio Funes Cartagena said in San Salvador on 5 December that his country was witnessing an "unprecedented process" of falling criminality while crime rates were rising elsewhere in Latin America. This, he said, was partly for the truce that began last March between the main gangs, the Salvadoran daily El Mundo reported. Funes told 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 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, saying it fell more sharply after the gangs truce began on 8 March and unspecified police operations, El Mundo reported then. Separately El Salvador and Russia signed a security agreement in Moscow on 6 December focused on fighting drug trafficking, El Mundo reported. This was signed by Munguía and the head of the Russian Federation's Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov. Its provisions included exchange of information, "technological research," and training programmes.