Mexico's Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP) initiative is a government strategy aimed at crushing indigenous rebel uprisings in southern Mexico and at stemming the tide of immigrants from Central America, several NGOs claimed Thursday. For months, several regional NGOs have been studying what they call the "hidden interests" behind the PPP's infrastructure investments, and have been trying to forge a united front of indigenous communities to protest the plans. The PPP is a regional development initiative launched by Mexican President Vicente Fox that the government says aims to improve living conditions and stimulate economic development in southern Mexico and Central America. In late June, Fox announced that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a 4 billion-dollar credit line for PPP infrastructure projects. "The main objective is to improve living conditions in the region, optimizing human and natural resources within a framework of sustainable development that respects ethnic diversity," the Mexican president said when announcing approval of the line of credit. But according to Carlos Fazio, an analyst with the La Jornada daily, the PPP is an economic plan masking a military strategy in the troubled southern Mexican state of Chiapas, namely against leftist Zapatista rebels. "The PPP is the same old counter-insurgency strategy with a friendlier face," Fazio said. Gustavo Castro, of the Community Action Center for Political and Economic Research, said that behind the infrastructure projects were the interests of large multinationals that want to gain control of valuable energy, mining and ecological resources. Castro said Fox's plan was to convince the outside world that the conflict in Chiapas is under control, that the Zapatistas are nothing more than a political force that will sooner or later sit down to negotiate an end to rebel resistance. "The huge projects centering on hydroelectric plants, highways, dry canals, oil and gas exploration, bio-diversity, water and other strategic resources they want to privatize, are militarizing and paramilitarizing the indigenous communities," Castro said. He noted that while the Mexican government has granted autonomy to the central bank "putting 80 percent control in the hands of foreign banks," it denies indigenous peoples the right to self-determination.