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 The "Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle"
aims to renovate highways, city bypasses and border crossings in
Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as carry out
improvements to other infrastructure in the region.
The plan aims to provide people in the impoverished region with jobs
and an incentive not to emigrate north. Including projects that have
already been announced, the planned works are worth well over $1
billion dollars.
A surge in unaccompanied children arriving this year at the U.S.
border has pushed the United States, Mexico and Central American
nations to seek new strategies to reduce the number of children and
families trying to get into U.S. territory.
The flood of migrants has stretched U.S. resources on its southwest
border and revealed the hardships many migrants face on the journey.
 The development plan, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, proposes
doubling the capacity of the shared Central American network of
power grids known as SIEPAC as well as supplying natural gas from
southern Mexico to Central America.
Guatemala's Foreign Minister Carlos Morales told Reuters that U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry had made clear $50 million was
immediately available for the plan, with any more funds needing to
be approved by the U.S. Congress.
The final details of the plan would be agreed upon by Central
American presidents in a meeting taking place early next year,
perhaps in February, he added.
The infrastructure projects planned for Honduras alone would be
worth "hundreds of millions of dollars," a Honduran government
official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Given that the U.S. marketplace was the main destination of drugs
trafficked through Central America, the United States ought to
shoulder the cost of over 80 percent of the aid authorized by the
plan, the same Honduran official said.
Speaking in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, Honduran
President Juan Hernandez called for an international coalition to
fight the scourge of cross-border drug smuggling, making an explicit
link with the international alliance U.S. President Barack Obama has
sought to forge for tackling the threat of Islamic fundamentalists.
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"I ask, what is the difference between the terrorism caused by
radical fundamentalists, and the terrorism caused by drug
traffickers?" he asked. "What is the difference between those
displaced by violence in other regions, and those displaced by
violence caused by drug traffickers?"
The plan for the region, which suffers from high murder rates and
widespread poverty, was developed with the help of the
Inter-American Development Bank. It also includes proposals to
improve several airports, including in Belize and Nicaragua.
It mentions a regional investment plan from 2015 to 2019, but that
section of the document was blank in a copy reviewed by Reuters. It
was not clear how the projects would be financed.
Foreign ministers from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador presented
the plan to U.S. and Mexican officials on the sidelines of the U.N.
General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, without giving details of
what it involved.
The draft did not detail how much money would be needed to carry out
the works mentioned, some of which have already been announced such
as a $1.2 billion planned pipeline between Salina Cruz in Mexico and
Escuintla in southern Guatemala.
Mexican lawmakers say boosting economic development in the region is
crucial to stop the flow of migrants north. The projects listed
could provide lucrative contracts to construction firms in Mexico,
the United States and elsewhere.
(Additional reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; Writing by
Dave Graham; Editing by Simon Gardner, Gabriel Stargardter, Cynthia
Osterman and Michael Perry)
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