Weekly Report - 07 June 2012 (WR-12-22)

NICARAGUA | Iran pardons debt. On 29 May during a visit to Managua, Ali Saeedlu, Iran’s vice-president and deputy minister for international affairs, announced that Iran would pardon Nicaragua’s Cold War debt — totalling some US$164m — and in exchange offer Nicaragua a new US$250m loan. Saeedlu’s announcement, which followed a meeting with President Daniel Ortega, is one of the few pledges to have materialised following the establishment of diplomatic ties in 2007, a relationship which continues to be viewed with suspicion in the US. Aside from an investment in a Managua clinic, the relationship has yet to translate into any other significant cooperation. For example Iran’s 2007 pledges to build a US$230m hydroelectric plant and a US$350m deep-water port in Nicaragua have yet to materialise. Saeedlu also said that Iran was ready to move forward on another promise to build a dairy plant in Nicaragua.

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