MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Benetton donates land for Mapuche use in Patagonia.

Details of the donation still have to be worked out, but Benetton said in a statement that Pérez Esquivel can make use of the land as he deems appropriate.

Details of the donation still have to be worked out, but Benetton said in a statement that Pérez Esquivel can make use of the land as he deems appropriate. "This is a piece of productive land in Patagonia, of good quality, located in the whereabouts of the city of Esquel," Chubut province, said Benetton

The firm cited Pérez Esquivel as "a guarantor of a renowned reputation and integrity and of great knowledge of the situation of Patagonia."

Pérez Esquivel is an architect who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his activism against human rights violations committed by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. He is currently in Rome for a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners that starts in the Italian capital tomorrow. The meeting, organized by a foundation headed by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, runs through Friday.

Company sources said the land donated is not the same that the company disputed in court in May with Mapuche Indian leaders Rosa Rúa Nahuelquir and Atilio Curiñanco. On that occasion, the company won the case and a court ruled that the land in question belonged to Benetton.

Pérez Esquivel has in the last few weeks been campaigning with a group of Mapuche Indians in Italy and hoping to meet Luciano Benetton to discuss the land situation in Patagonia.

The company said yesterday that the meeting could not take place because Mr. Benetton was away on a business trip.

Benetton's subsidiary Compañía Tierras Sud Argentino own some 900,000 hectares of land in Patagonia: 550,000 in Santa Cruz; 300,000 in Chubut and 50,000 in Río Negro

Rome - The Italian clothing giant Benetton said yesterday it is donating 2,500 hectares of land in Patagonia to Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel ? a move Benetton hopes will help indigenous populations in the region. Benetton owns around 900,000 hectares in Patagonia.

Pérez Esquivel has been working with non-governmental organizations on preserving lands belonging to indigenous groups in Patagonia and has campaigned against private companies that have bought large properties in the region in recent years.

The donation is meant as a "concrete and at the same time symbolic gesture, a contribution to the coexistence of different peoples in Patagonia," Luciano Benetton, the firm's head, said in a statement issued in Rome and distributed in Buenos Aires.(BAH)