Buenos Aires, Argentina – Argentine President Nestor Kirchner on Friday led a demonstration on the border with Uruguay to protest proposed establishment in the neighboring nation of two paper mills critics say will pollute the area.
Before several thousand people in the town of Gualeguaychu, where residents have periodically blocked border crossings to dramatize their opposition to the mills, Kirchner explained his decision to bring the dispute before the world court in The Hague.
The effort to protect the Uruguay River, which forms the border between the two countries, “concerns all Argentines,” the president said, an assertion seemingly borne out by the score of provincial governors, Cabinet ministers, union leaders and lawmakers – including some from the opposition – who joined him at the event.
“Gualeguaychu and the province of Entre Rios are not alone in this struggle. Argentina takes it on as a problem of its own,” Kirchner said, adding that Buenos Aires chose the “path of law, prudence and rationality” by taking its case to the International Court of Justice in a brief filed Thursday.
Argentina contends that Montevideo violated the 1975 Uruguay River Statute by not consulting Buenos Aires before approving plans by the Spanish firm Ence and Finland’s Botnia to build paper mills in the Uruguayan riverside town of Fray Bentos.
“No one can claim sovereignty over the use of an asset that is not entirely his,” Kirchner said Friday. “The Uruguay River is an international waterway and hence must be protected. That is why we adopted a statute more than 30 years ago.”
He said Uruguay has refused Buenos Aires’ request to provide more information about the planned mills and to undertake a serious study of the potential environmental impact on the Uruguay River, which flows through farming regions in the northeastern Argentine delta.
A recent World Bank report called Argentine alarm about “catastrophic” pollution from the plants unfounded, but also faulted Ence and Botnia for not providing enough data for the impact of the projects to be accurately evaluated.
“We are right. The law is on our side,” Kirchner told the crowd in Gualeguaychu, where he and the governors signed a declaration giving preservation of the ecosystem the status of a “state policy” transcending political rivalries and changes of administration.
“Latin America values the right to life as a supreme good and must take charge of the struggle to stop the more developed countries’ carving us up to serve their interests, exploiting our needs and evading their responsibility for the degradation of the environment,” the Argentine president said.
“We all have to be part of the discussion. The North must listen to the South,” Kirchner stressed.
Also speaking at the rally was Entre Rios Gov. Jorge Busti, who spoke of the “brotherhood” between his province and Uruguay while expressing regret that “we have exhausted all the diplomatic means” of resolving the conflict.
“We ask our twin brothers to choose the process of growth they like, but that they not pollute us with the pulp plants, which will hurt a province and, in particular, a city that has 80,000 inhabitants and which lives from farming and ranching,” he said.
Busti hailed “the struggle and the maturity” of Gualeguaychu residents, who have on several occasions blockaded the bridge to Uruguay to protest the mills’ construction, drawing repeated complaints from Montevideo.
For Uruguay, the two paper mills represent a $1.8 billion investment – its largest-ever inflow of foreign money – as well as a source of jobs in a country where unemployment remains high after a 2002 recession blamed in part on financial crises in neighboring Argentina and Brazil.
