BRAZIL'S PRESIDENT FINDS ETHANOL A HARD SELL IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited four Central American nations in a tour of northern Latin America that began in Mexico. It was, for the most part, a "biofuels diplomacy" trip that was played in the media as pitting Lula's ethanol against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's oil. By most accounts, oil won. Brazil is heavily invested in ethanol, and Lula has promoted the stuff as the future great source of the planet's energy and of the region's well-being.He met the greatest resistance to his message in Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega conditioned the expansion of ethanol production on not "jeopardizing the environment or encouraging monoculture." Ortega came down hard on ethanol made from corn, calling it "a crime and an attack on the rights to food of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.