The United States army is expanding its current programme of assistance in Latin America to help rebuild schools, repair bridges and operate clinics in countries which suffered widespread hurricane damage last year.

Several thousand American soldiers were sent to Central America to help cope with the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

A spokesman for the US Southern Command said they would now spend an extra seventy-million dollars on their "New Horizon" nation-building programme.

Several hundred American troops will work in each country - Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic - to help revitalise their economies and rebuild the infrastructure.