MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spanish prime minister wants to broker Buenos Aires-Montevideo truce in pulp mill dispute

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wishes to use the Ibero-American Summit that opened yesterday in Montevideo to broker a truce between Argentina and Uruguay in their ongoing rift over Uruguayan paper pulp mills.

Eight of 19 Latin American leaders stayed home from the summit that opened yesterday, their absence marring efforts to unite Spain and Portugal in a front to call for safeguarding the rights of illegal immigrants.

At yesterday's opening ceremony, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will meet with President Néstor Kirchner today, praised the leaders for resolving to make progress on growing illegal immigration in an increasingly mobile world community.

Enrique Iglesias, head of the summit's general-secretariat, said a working draft of the final ??Commitment of Montevideo'' to be signed tomorrow would call for heightened efforts to protect the human rights of millions of migrants in Latin America and Europe.

Uruguayan Foreign Minister Reinaldo Gargano said yesterday he hopes that Kirchner and Uruguay's President Tabaré Vázquez can speak about the two countries' differences.

Kirchner is scheduled to meet with Rodríguez Zapatero today but does not have a meeting arranged with his Uruguayan counter part yet.

The Spaniard, who is in Montevideo accompanying King Juan Carlos II, said he wants to help Argentina and Uruguay settle their year long environmental and diplomatic dispute.

"I will always work to help open talks between Argentina and Uruguay," said Rodríguez Zapatero in a press conference.

The Spanish prime minister is to meet with President Tabaré Vázquez before meeting with Kirchner at noon.

Vázquez, speaking in the opening ceremony, said that all ways to help build a strong Ibero-American community should be talked about. The comment was made hours after foreign minister Gargano said he "wants them (Kirchner and Vázquez) to meet" and also announced that they may meet, but refused to give further details.

The minister spoke more extensively about the roadblocks staged by environmentalists outside the Argentine cities of Colón and Gualeguaychú which began yesterday and are expected to last all through the weekend to protest against the construction of a paper pulp plant in Uruguay, on the fringes of the city of Fray Bentos.

"It is sad, because it seems we are living in the time of walls rather than in the time of openness," said Gargano in a press conference at the Foreign ministry. "For a year-and-a-half it has been said that there would be pollution and skin cancer, but the environmental reports show this is not true," said Gargano.

Residents of Gualeguaychú, which is across the River Uruguay from Fray Bentos, have campaigned against the construction of the paper mill project since 2005 and gained an important victory earlier in the year when the Spanish firm ENCE said it would relocate its plant elsewhere in Uruguay. However, the Finnish company Botnia is continuing the construction of its own plant and therefore the environmental campaigners have not stopped blockading the access to the San Martín bridge that links both countries.

The picket staged yesterday included the construction of a wall on the international route 136 that leads to the San Martín bridge, as a symbol of the division between the two historically friendly countries.

Uruguay has repeatedly accused the Kirchner administration of not doing enough to convince the protesters to put off their demonstrations. Yesterday, Gargano again said Kirchner does not do enough in this sense.

A Mercosur court earlier in the year ruled that although the pickets were not the fault of the Argentine government, the administration was not doing enough to stop them.

Picture:Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero,King Juan Carlos II, President Tabare Vazquez