Nicaragua Steps Back from PPP
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega s absence from the presidential summit in Mexico, could signal the beginning of Nicaragua s distancing from the Puebla Panama Plan, a project Mexican President Felipe Calderon is trying to resuscitate.

The Sandinista leader s reluctance starts from inclusion of Colombia in an initiative that was launched in June 2001 by Mexican ex President Vicente Fox, an initiative with numerous detractors since its inception.

"It calls attention, because this meeting originated seeking Central American integration, and Colombia does not belong to Central America," Ortega warned last week, when he announced he would not attend the summit in Campeche.

The Nicaraguan president said that with extension of the PPP outside Central America to include Bogota, some presidents of the region seek to favor the South American nation, which maintains a territorial dispute with Nicaragua.

Ortega openly accused some previous presidents of Honduras and Costa Rica of having "included Colombia (in the PP), to try to demarcate borders that Central Americans should delimit, he said.

The bordering area between Managua and Bogota covers the San Andres Island and the Roncador, Quitasueños, and Serranos keys, all in the Caribbean, and the solution to the conflict is currently in the hands of The Hague International Court of Justice.