smarty / nats help needed

[HunkyLuke]

I am trying to geotarget a couple of pages in our nats system.

I have already had the mod_geoip apache module and db installed on my server. I am now trying to create a smarty plugin and use it within a nats template page to do the actual geotargeting - but I am stumped and need help.

Here is what I have done so far:
I created and uploaded a file called function.country.php into my nats/Smarty-2.6.14/libs/plugins directory with the following code:

PHP Code:

<%
$country = apache_note("GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE");
%> 


I modified my page template file and added the following code to test:

PHP Code:

{if $country == "US"}
    <You are in the US
{elseif $country == "PA"}
    <You are in Panama
{else}
    You are not in the US or Panama
{/if} 


But when visiting the page, all visitors get "you are not in the US or Panama" even though I am testing from those two locations.

What am I doing wrong?

thanks
Luke