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Aid amount off agenda for minister's trip to Taiwan

The Nicaraguan foreign minister will visit Taiwan at the end of this month to discuss details on bilateral cooperation, but not to bargain about the amount of the aid that Taiwan would provide, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said.

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) attended Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's inauguration on Jan. 10, and held talks on new cooperative projects in the medical, educational and agricultural fields, Simon Ko (柯森耀), director-general of the ministry's Department of Central and South American Affairs, said yesterday.

Ko said that Samuel Santos, the Nicaraguan foreign minister, would lead a delegation at the end of the month to discuss how to implement the details of these bilateral plans.

"The two governments signed a cooperative memorandum of understanding and one of the items in the document said that the Nicaraguan foreign minister would visit Taiwan before April and we have implemented this agreement," Ko said.

But Ko said that the government had not discussed the amount of aid to be provided to Nicaragua as some newspapers had speculated.

According to a story run by the Chinese-language China Times last week, Nicaragua is seeking a US$495 million loan from Taiwan and details of the cooperation agreement would be finalized when Santos visits Taiwan this month.

Ko also said that Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) would not visit Costa Rica this month, adding that the ministry had no plans to arrange a visit by Lu to the country.

During his visit to Nicaragua, Chen had said that Lu would visit Costa Rica this month.
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