After a quick stop in Venezuela to visit with close-ally, Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega is traveling to several other countries openly hostile to the United States aboard a jet on loan from Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi. The 10-day tour includes stops in Algeria, Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Italy.
The trip is meant to finalize a range of new financial and trade agreements with countries that Nicaragua has largely had estranged relations with over the past 16 years. Ortega defended his decision, saying that it was Nicaragua’s sovereign right to forge ties with any government that may come to its aid.
The trip to Iran would seemingly raise the greatest concerns, but U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli expressed no objections when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Ortega in Managua last January. Indeed, there has been no noticeable fall-out from Nicaragua establishing formal relations with North Korea, a country President Bush famously labeled as part of the axis of evil.
Ortega has also re-established ties with the former Soviet Union, which had funneled arms to the Sandinista government in the 1980s, much to the alarm of the U.S. But the world has changed dramatically since the Cold War. Despite some recent disagreements with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Bush still considers the Russian leader a friend. And even Qaddafi of Libya is on now better terms with the United States.
Opposition leaders here are concerned that the new alliances may isolate Nicaragua from the rest of the world, but Ortega has been able to manage diverse and competing governments, even when going against their political wishes. For example, Ortega recently reversed Nicaragua’s one-time support for hunting whales, an unpopular position that only a few countries in the world support, namely Japan.
The move was expected to endanger Japan’s generous donations to Nicaragua. Yet just last week, the Japanese government agreed to $1.7 million aid package for Nicaraguan schools.
Your Latin America Insider,
Suzan Haskins
for International Living
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