With the region finally free of war, President Clinton carried modest trade deals to Thursday's Central American summit and welcomed a new era of "peace and cooperation."
After a fence-mending visit to Mexico, the president planned to bless an open-skies accord that should make flying here easier and cheaper. The summit's trade declaration would promote U.S. tariff reductions for more Central American goods, administration officials said.But it is the summit's new faces - not new initiatives - that make this a remarkable gathering.
With Guatemala's 1996 peace treaty, the entire region is at peace for the first time in a generation. When President Bush visited here eight years ago, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala were still in guerrilla conflicts involving U.S.-backed factions.
Bush called Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega an "unwanted animal at a garden party" at the 1989 summit.
After a fireworks display lit up his late-night airport arrival Wednesday, Clinton declared: "This is a moment of great opportunity and hope for all the Americas, but especially here in Central America where decades of conflict and division have given way to peace and cooperation."
In a hangar decorated by potted trees and swaths of sod, an orchestra played the U.S. national anthem and children waved American flags and sang. As a symbol of the region's embrace of peace, Clinton was welcomed "by students and musicians - not by soldiers," Costa Rica President Jose Figueres said.
Honduras President Carlos Roberto Reina, upon arrival, said Clinton was seeing "a new Central America - more ethical, integrated and democratic."
But some leaders are grumbling that the United States has been neglectful of the infant democracies.
"Our Central American countries should not be taken into account only when there are wars or fratricidal struggles . . . aided by the United States," Nicaragua President Arnoldo Aleman said.
If the United States does not do more - by tearing down trade barriers and other initiatives - "it will be difficult for us to find peace in our countries," he said.
The summit brought together seven Central American leaders - from Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.
Like the Mexican government, the leaders planned to press Clinton on a tough new U.S. immigration law. Some of them link rising violence and crime to increasing deportations from the United States. Others fear mass deportations will drain their economies.
Clinton's retort: The United States has to protect its borders, but will be fair and humane about it. "We are a nation of immigrants - and laws," the president said in Mexico.