As usual, my fault ;)
The problem was the "rule order".
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php last;
break;
}
rewrite "^/({2})/?$" /index.php?country=$1 last;
The first rule stopped the second one from working.
Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,1026,1045#msg-1045