Taiwan Seeks To Prevent Nicaragua From Embracing China
Taiwan has renewed its invitation to Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos to visit Taipei as China is trying to woo Nicaragua over from Taipei, a newspaper said Monday.

Santos was scheduled to visit Taipei in March to discuss cooperation projects but cancelled the visit for unknown reasons. Taiwan sent Deputy Foreign Minister Hou Ching-shan last week to Nicaragua to renew aid offers and renew the invitation to Santos to visit Taipei.

Managua has not said if Santos will visit Taipei and has confirmed that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Santos will attend the Plan Puebla-Panama summit on Mexico's integration with Central America, to be held Tuesday in Mexico.

The China Times quoted an unnamed source as saying that Ortega will meet with China's representatives on the sidelines of the Plan Puebla-Panama summit, and Nicaragua will decide afterward if Santos will visit China.

Nicaragua is one of 24 countries that still recognize Taiwan, formally called the Republic of China.

Taiwan has been carefully guarding its diplomatic ties with Nicaragua since Ortega swept back to power in November 2006.

In 1985, Ortega's leftist Sandinista government cut ties with Taiwan to recognize China. Nicaragua resumed ties with Taipei in 1990 after Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, a political moderate, defeated the former revolutionary leader at the polls and became president.

During his latest, successful campaign to return to power, Ortega vowed to resume diplomatic ties with China and only maintain trade ties with Taiwan. But after taking office on January 10, Ortega assured Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian that Nicaragua would maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan while developing trade ties with China.

In its March 7 report, the China Times said that Chen signed cooperation pacts when he attended Ortega's inauguration.

Santos' scheduled March visit to Taipei was to finalize details of the cooperation, which includes a 495-million-US-dollar loan from Taiwan to develop Nicaragua's agriculture, according to the China Times.