“We hope to begin the task of negotiating a multilateral agreement to a multinational problem,” Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rene Castro told delegates to the meeting.

Seven of the participating countries, including the United States, signed an agreement in 2003 to cooperate against the illegal drug trade. Only now are they trying to turn the “San Jose Convention” into a plan of action.

The six other countries that participated in the original agreement were France, Holland, Guatemala, Belize, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.

This week, they were joined by Panama, Honduras, Colombia, Nicaragua and Britain for the new round of treaty negotiations.

Items discussed by the delegates included information-sharing among multinational law enforcement agencies.

They also are considering authorizing military ships from participating countries to pursue maritime drug traffickers off each other’s coasts.

“The UK fully supports the objectives of this initiative,” British Ambassador Thomas Kennedy told the news media.

If the countries can agree on how to enforce the agreement, it would primarily benefit small countries that have been overwhelmed by the law enforcement effort needed to stop drug trafficking, according to convention delegates.

For the same reasons, Guayana separately reached an agreement with the United States in 2003.

It allows the U.S. military to enter Guayana’s territorial waters, board suspicious ships for inspection and overfly the country to search for drug traffickers.

Previous treaties have sought to end the Caribbean’s cross-border drug trade, but none effectively. They included the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

The meeting this week in Costa Rica continues a goal President Obama mentioned last week during a trip to Santiago, Chile.

“As the nations of Central America develop a new regional security strategy, the United States stands ready to do our part through a new partnership that puts the focus where it should be – on the security of citizens,” Obama said. “And with regional and international partners, we’ll make sure our support is not just well-intentioned, but is well-coordinated and well-spent.”

He called drug gangs “a direct threat to democracy, because they fuel the corruption that rots institutions from within.”

About 84 percent of cocaine shipments headed for the United States passed through Central America last year, up from 23 percent in 2006, according to U.S. law enforcement agencies.

2006 also was the year Mexican President Felipe Calderon started his military crackdown on drug cartels.

Now, five of Central America’s seven countries are listed by the U.S. government as “major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries.”

Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras were added last year for the first time.

Disorder caused by a 2009 coup in Honduras left the country open for drug cartels to move in, according to American officials.

This month, law enforcement personnel discovered a large cocaine processing lab in Honduras, indicating the country is becoming a starting point for drug trafficking rather than just a stop on the way to the cartels’ customers.