Rumsfeld will meet early Tuesday with Argentine Defense Minister Jose Pampuro before heading to Brazil and Guatemala.

Argentina has contributed more than 550 troops to the Brazilian-led UN stabilization force in Haiti, whose former president Jean Bertrand Aristide fled in February 2004 amid an uprising. Guatemala has also sent soldiers there.

"We have had a good relationship with their efforts in Haiti, where the three (Brazil, Argentina and Guatemala) of them are involved," Rumsfeld told reporters on the plane taking him to Argentina.

Rumsfeld will discuss with Pampuro the situation in Haiti as the Caribbean nation prepares for elections scheduled for November and December. An interim government has governed Haiti since Aristide's departure.

"The forces in Haiti have done generally a good job and there are some questions that as you move forward to the elections there may be people who would like to take steps to prevent them from being successful as we've seen in other places of the world," he said.

He said he would also discuss with Pampuro a draft resolution before the Organization of American States to control portable surface-to-air missiles in Latin America.

"I'll anticipate we'll be discussing (the missiles), which is an important concern in the world and something we've been working on with a number of countries all across the globe," Rumsfeld said.

"It's a danger, it's a threat," Rumsfeld said. The missiles "can be operated by terrorists or by revolutionaries or others."

The United States is particularly concerned that Nicaragua's Soviet-made shoulder fired SAM-7 missiles could end up in the hands of terrorists.

US officials have frozen military aid to Nicaragua to pressure it into destroying its arsenal, which the then leftist Sandinista regime obtained in the 1980s to combat US-backed Contra rebels.

Nicaragua had said it would destroy some but not all of the missiles.

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