Mexico - The mega container port and rail project planned 150 miles south of San Diego at Baja California's Punta Colonet will benefit the United States as well as Mexico, a top Mexican federal official said recently.

"This is a very important project. It's a project that should be taken in the interest of both nations. Even though it's on Mexican soil, the United States should be interested in this project," said Manuel Rodriguez Arregui, the Mexican subsecretary of transportation overseeing the project.

MEXPORT - A mineral rights dispute will not derail a Punta Colonet port, said the Mexican federal official overseeing it. Photo by Charlie Neuman.

In a phone interview from Mexico City, Rodriguez discussed several aspects of the port project, including the status of a dispute with a mineralgroup that has stalled the bidding process, the roles of the federal and state governments, and the impact of the development on residents of the Colonet region.

The new port should relieve increasing pressure on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach from incoming Asian cargo.

"The growth rate of trade with Asia requires more infrastructure," Rodriguez said. "It's not in both countries' best interest to have a bottleneck."

Plans call for the Colonet port to be as large as the Los Angeles and Long Beach facilities combined. The new port would occupy nearly 7,000 acres, 97 percent of it water and 3 percent tidelands, Ensenada port Director Carlos Jauregui Gonzalez said in an interview last year.

Under a bidding process run by the federal government, private companies will develop and