US withdraws Peace Corps volunteers

TEGUCIGALPA (AP):

The United States (US) government's decision to pull out all its Peace Corps volunteers from Honduras for safety reasons is yet another blow to a nation still battered by a coup and recently labelled the world's most deadly country.

Neither US nor Honduran officials have said what specifically prompted them to withdraw the 158 Peace Corps volunteers, which the US State Department said was one of the largest missions in the world last year.

It is the first time Peace Corps missions have been withdrawn from Central America since civil wars swept the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The Corps closed operations in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1991 and in El Salvador from 1980 to 1993 for safety and security reasons, but has since returned to both countries.

But the wave of violence and drug cartel-related crime hitting the Central American country had affected volunteers working on HIV prevention, water sanitation and youth projects, President Porfirio Lobo acknowledged.

Monday's pullout also comes less than two months after Howard Berman, a California Democrat, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reconsider sending police and military aid to Honduras as a response to human-rights abuses.

"It's a welcome step toward the United States recognising that they have a disastrous situation in Honduras," said Dana Frank, a University of California Santa Cruz history professor who has researched and travelled in Honduras.