MEXICO: Mexico, Colombia and Central American leaders meet to discuss regional issues including possible oil refinery

Record ID: 303835

  • Title: MEXICO: Mexico, Colombia and Central American leaders meet to discuss regional issues including possible oil refinery
  • Date: 11th April 2007
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF COLOMBIAN PRESIDENT ALVARO URIBE ARRIVING
  • Embargoed: 26th April 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: International Relations,Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVA5YQOFCP7KGX4TWU9WTPUKF8XQ
  • Story Text: Mexico, Colombia and Central American leaders met to discuss regional integration and a possible joint oil refinery. At the event, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe promised a reward for information that leads to the arrest of those responsible for the bombing of police headquarters in the city of Cali. Mexican President Felipe Calderon hosted Central American leaders and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Campeche on Tuesday (April 10) for a two-day summit focusing on regional issues.
    The presidents want to strengthen the Puebla Panama Plan (PPP), a regional strategy to increase integration and overcome poverty through economic development among the member nations.
    "Today, in this summit, we're taking an important step toward the advance and integration of our region," said Calderon. "We're set on revitalizing and encouraging the development of Meso-America in which south, southeastern Mexico lies. In this meeting, we need to look over the progress of projects undertaken, value objectively what's gone well and what's needed to be corrected, the advance of the infrastructure projects and the social and economic projects that we've impelled and assure the development of all the initiatives and the execution of the projects that we're proposing."
    Their agenda also includes discussing a multi-million dollar oil refinery proposal-- a Mexican plan to supply oil to the Central American region at low prices.
    Several countries, including Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica, were expected to bid to host the refinery.
    International banking officials also attended the summit.
    As he walked outside the conference center, Uribe, whose country is fighting a four-decade-old three-way civil war, brought up a weighty domestic issue with reporters-- the latest bombing.
    "Yesterday, the Defence Minister and some other leaders were in Cali and they're stationing the operation against the terrorist groups. General Castro was telling me this afternoon that he had confidence that we can clarify this terrorist attempt. The government has reiterated, and I repeated it this morning, a 1-million peso reward (approximately USD 463,000) that will allow us to have information with which we can capture the terrorists responsible for the bombing in Cali," he said.
    Early Monday (April 9), a bomb wrecked Cali's six-story police headquarters in a blow to President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security policies. Colombian authorities say the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are responsible.
    Current PPP members include Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and several Mexican states. Colombia seeks to join. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega-- a close ally of oil-rich Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez-- did not attend. Chavez has promised to build an oil refinery in Nicaragua.
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