Posted on 01/08/2007 4:29:55 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
A potentially huge economic and social-assistance package from Caracas to Nicaragua to be announced this week will help kill off US ambitions of maintaining its influence in Central America, Venezuela said on the weekend.
The package, which Hugo Chávez, the vehemently anti-US Venezuelan leader, plans to outline on Thursday comes as Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s former leftwing guerrilla leader, will return to power for the first time in almost 17 years.
Mr Ortega, now 61, won November’s presidential election with about 38 per cent of the vote on a campaign of populist promises to help the poor, national reconciliation and a smattering of anti-US rhetoric. He is set to begin his five-year term on Wednesday.
In an interview with the FT, Miguel Gómez, Mr Chávez’s ambassador to Managua, welcomed Mr Ortega’s election. “We are delighted that Commander Daniel Ortega has won,” he said, referring to Mr Ortega’s military title used during the 1970s and 1980s.
He said the assistance package Caracas had in mind would help transform Nicaragua.
“Over the next five years Nicaragua is going to feel the effects of true co-operation based on solidarity, not one of trade and speculation…we want to infect Latin America with our model.”
Mr Gómez said he was not in a position to value the package but said it could easily run into billions of dollars, and would range from agricultural machinery and supplies and energy-related infrastructure and fuel to large-scale house-building projects as well as health and educational programmes.
He even said Caracas could buy some of Nicaragua’s immense internal debt as it has done with Argentine debt in recent years. He described the package as “a boost for the further expansion of the leftwing movement in Central America.
All this is likely to come as a blow to Washington, which last year was candid about what it believed an Ortega victory would mean. “It’s pretty clear that what would happen [in the event of an Ortega victory] would be the introduction of a Chávez model here on the Isthmus,” Paul Trivelli, US ambassador in Managua, told the FT.
Mr Gómez said that much of the aid would come in the form of energy. Nicaragua is suffering acute shortfalls of electricity, and even residents in the capital have complained of power cuts lasting up to 10 hours a day.
One proposal would be to elevate to the state level an agreement struck last year between Caracas and Nicaragua’s Sandinista-dominated mayoral association to supply Venezuelan fuel with generous credit conditions.
The deal, which he said aimed to supply the Central American nation with 10m barrels of refined products a year, much of it petrol and gas, involved Nicaragua paying only 60 per cent of the cost up front with the remaining 40 per cent payable over 25 years with a two-year grace period and only 1 per cent interest a year.
Mr Gómez insisted that the bulk of the resulting debt to Caracas could be paid in the form of Nicaraguan agricultural products such as sugar, beans and meat.
The package would also involve energy-related infrastructure, such as fuel-storage facilities and possibly even an oil refinery. He said Caracas would contemplate building an oil pipeline between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to enable “Nicaragua to benefit from royalties” and Venezuela to sell oil to countries such as China.
Venezuela has immense difficulty selling its copious oil reserves to Asia because most of its tankers do not fit through the antiquated locks of the Panama Canal, Mr Gomez said.
“At the moment we only sell about 5 per cent of our production to China and Japan when we could easily [send] them half our production.”
At the same time, Caracas was organising the arrival of about 200,000 small gas stoves and cylinders to help Nicaragua’s poorest inhabitants many of whom have to cook with wood. The idea is to sell the equipment to the families, though he said it would likely be heavily subsidised.
In other areas, assistance would include a house-building scheme involving 200,000 new dwellings available to Nicaraguans at a cost of no more than $10,000 each, and a road linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Financing would come mainly from Venezuela’s state-run Economic and Social Development Bank (Bandes), which he said would open a branch in Nicaragua in the coming days. Mr Gómez insisted that none of the assistance package would be in the form of donations. “Our policy is not to give anything away”, he said. “Gifts don’t solve a thing.”
But he added that in the coming days Mr Chavez would forgive Nicaragua’s current debt with Bandes, accumulated mainly from the purchase of Venezuelan fuel products. The debt, he said, exceeded $30m.
Wish them well in their new endeavor. Can scarcity be shared ?
"Venezuela aid to cement Ortega ties"
I'd just tie his shoelaces together.
I wonder if Danny O is still sporting his snappy military uniform. Real GQ material...
Dannie Ortega is going to get weapons from Premier Vladimir Putin.
Ortega answered Itar-Tass questions after a meeting with the Russian delegation led by Audit Chamber chairman Sergei Stepashin, which had arrived for the inauguration ceremony.
For his part, Stepashin said Russia, after so-called "lost decade" is returning to Latin America "with serious intentions and for a long time."
Along with the resumption of full-scale cooperation with Nicaragua in the tradition trade and economic sphere, "Moscow is ready to launch partnership ties in the sphere of science, fishing, agriculture, power generation, and the military-technical field."
This should be funny, particularly after a year of rule by decree in Venezuela.
I imagine that the Dhimmicrats will campaign in favor of sending aid to Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil...
I see we have a new "Axis of Evil" in our own hemisphere: Cuba, Venezuela, and now Nicaragua.
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