A5

Bill Graveland
THE CANADIAN PRESS

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BANFF, Alta. - Canada and the United States may be focusing their military efforts primarily on the other side of the world, but smaller countries in the Americas want attention to shift closer to home.

Regional defence and security have been at the heart of discussions at the Conference of Defence Ministers of the Americas in the mountain resort of Banff, Alta., this week.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates as well as defence ministers from Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean nations have been among the more than 500 military delegates from 34 countries attending.

While Canada and the United States are heavily involved in Afghanistan or Iraq, other countries want to spend more time on domestic issues.

"We pointed out that in its traditional sense of defence - war, aggression, one country against the other - it's happening less and less in this hemisphere," said Angela Missouri Sherman-Peter from the Bahamian ministry of national security.

"The security concerns of the countries in this hemisphere are now beginning to change. Most of them arise from trans-national criminal activities - drug trafficking, arms trafficking and human smuggling."

Sherman-Peter noted that her island nation's geographical location, just off the coast of the U.S., makes it a focal point for such activities.

"We have people coming from as far away as Uzbekistan to try and get to the United States through the Bahamas. If you can get to the Bahamas, you can easily be smuggled to the United States."

She isn't expecting any country from the Americas to send in troops to help curtail crime, but suggests sharing intelligence and updated technology would help.

"There's technology that can allow you to track a plane leaving South America and track it all the way to the Bahamas. There are many, many levels of where you can co-operate."

Sherman-Peter noted there are two senior officers from the Royal Bahamas Police Force attached to the RCMP in Ottawa and with the Toronto Police Service.

Canada's representative at the conference agrees it's possible to improve intelligence-gathering in the Americas.

"There's an old army expression that an hour spent in (reconnaissance) is worth 12 hours in the battlefield," said Laurie Hawn, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence.

"If you can be one step ahead of the bad guys you're going to have a much greater chance of success."

Hawn also pointed out that Canadian ships on exercises in the Caribbean have already helped out.

"We do a lot of interdiction of suspected drug traffickers, arms traffickers wherever they are."

Haiti, which has had UN peacekeepers in place in the impoverished country since 2004, is also looking for a shift in focus. Canada currently has 22 peacekeepers there, but at one point the number was close to 600.

Suze Percy Filippini, Haiti's representative on the Organization of American States, said peacekeepers have done a good job, but there are obstacles.

"There is a language problem. The major countries that contribute troops and police do not speak French and they don't speak Creole. It greatly limits their ability to communicate with the local people."

Filippini would also like to see more female peacekeepers to deal with the concerns of women and children.

Delegates have seemed united on the need to co-operate during natural disasters or international events such as the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the idea of the military fighting crime doesn't work for everyone.

In Brazil, there is a distinct separation between police and the armed forces, explained Lt.-Brig. Gilberto Antonio Saboya Burnier, secretary of politics, strategy and international affairs.

"Our military in Brazil do not deal with these issues. Some smaller nations, especially in Central America, don't have a distinction between police and military, so at times it is a bit complicated ... We don't have the ambition to change the status quo.

"We want to ensure peace. We want to have the area of the Americas free from nuclear, bio-chemical areas and those type of weapons."