Buenos Aires – The Environmental Assembly of the the Argentine city of Gualeguaychu launched Tuesday a campaign urging fellow citizens not to spend their summer vacations in Uruguay as a protest against the construction of two paper mills in that country which are considered potential sources of pollution.
“From Gualeguaychu we ask for the solidarity of all Argentines and invite them to vacation and invest in Argentina until Uruguay gets rid of the mills,” said a spokesperson for the assembly at a press conference in Buenos Aires.
Since 2003, local residents of Gualeguaychu in Entre Rios province have protested the installation of two industrial projects, one by the Finnish firm Botnia and the other by the Spanish company Ence, across the Uruguay River from their city in the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos.
Last summer, Argentines set up roadblocks on the three border crossings between the two countries, causing a 10-percent drop in the number of Argentine tourists making the trip to Uruguay for their vacations.
Meanwhile the basic dispute is being resolved by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where Argentina has lodged a complaint against Uruguay for infringing a bilateral treaty on the joint administration of the Uruguay River.
Gualeguaychu residents were meeting Tuesday in an assembly to decide whether to set up border roadblocks again, after the release of a preliminary report from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, according to which the paper mills will not harm the environment.
A few hours before the assembly was to start, the governor of Entre Riso, Jorge Busti, expressed the belief that Gualeguaychu residents would be making “a big mistake” if they put up roadblocks again and said that “the most intelligent thing is to continue working within the framework of international law.”
The IFC is analyzing the possibility of granting $200 million in financing for the Uruguay paper mills.
Ence announce last month that it had stopped construction in Fray Bentos and will move the plant to another part of Uruguay which is yet to be determined, while Botnia will go forward with its construction with an investment of $1.3 billion.
