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The construction of a Nicaragua Canal will be run by investors whether guarantees that the transit of the ships do not pollute the Great Lake of Granada and the San Juan River, said the president Daniel Ortega.

In statements broadcast by the radio station today the very first, Ortega noted that the project of building the channel for this country will be carried out if investors also provide resources to reforest the basins of the Great Lake of Nicaragua and the river San Juan.

"We have to take care of the Great Lake (or Lake of Granada) and we can not risk (with) the draft of the Grand Canal," said Ortega.

The president said that he is willing to "listen to proposals and showing me where he is guaranteed not to jeopardize the (Great) Lake" or the San Juan River, located near the border with Costa Rica.

Ortega said that the canal project, whose cost is approximately 30,000 million dollars, he said, "would generate enough resources" to reforest the banks of these bodies of freshwater.

He gave the example of the Panama Canal, which carries scored almost 100 years of operation, and "there have been no problems" of pollution.

"Rather, the resources it has generated (the Panama Canal) has enabled them to achieve sustainable and have immense forests everywhere," he said.

Ortega also denied that he is seeking a new path to build the canal, which would build a Nicaragua from south to north, but would run on the same route used by U.S. investors in their studies.

That route starts in San Juan del Norte (Caribbean south), passing through San Juan River, then through the Great Lake and crosses the Isthmus of the province of Rivas, until leaving on the beaches of Tola, in the Pacific south of Nicaragua, said.

"There is going to affect the Lake of Nicaragua," reaffirmed the Sandinista leader, who reiterated that it will be "open to listen to offers and approaches" on that project.

Ortega and the president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, signed in Moscow on December 18 a joint statement, a cooperation agreement and seven memorandums of understanding.

Managua official sources indicated that among the matters discussed Ortega and Medvedev in the Kremlin contains the proposed construction of a Canal by Nicaragua. EFE