MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pulp mill fight: Gorbachev intervention ?ridiculous'

Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Tabaré Vázquez act like two deaf men not willing to hear each other and who do not want to meet to talk, the 1980 Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel said yesterday.

Pérez Esquivel deemed a potential intervention by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the URSS, in the diplomatic rift as "ridiculous." Press reports over the weekend said that the Argentine government is considering asking Gorbachev to lobby the government of Finland to have it convince the Finnish firm Botnia to withdraw from the construction of the 1.2 billion-dollar paper pulp mill in Uruguay which is at the heart of the yearlong dispute between the Kirchner and Vázquez administrations.

"What sense is there in Gorbachev taking part in this when it must be solved by the Argentine and Uruguayan governments?" said Pérez Esquivel.

"Vázquez is just as stubborn as Kirchner, it's not as if one of them is better than the other. There is a shortage of ideas but lots of arrogance," he stated.

"I would like to ask how much will Gorbachev be paid?" added Pérez Esquivel, who also urged the residents of the city of Gualeguaychú to end their roadblocks on a highway that links both countries.

Late on Sunday night, the environmental assembly of the city of Colón decided that it will not stage its own roadblocks to support the struggle of the environmentalists of Gualeguaychú, but will organize other forms of protest. Two bridges between Uruguay and Argentina are near Gualeguaychú and Colón ? but there is a third crossing, over the Concordia-Salto Grande dam.

The environmental campaigners of Gualeguaychú have been blocking the road that leads to the international San Martín bridge since Monday of last week and plan to continue for an unlimited amount of time in spite of requests by national and provincial government officials to call off the protests.

Jorge Busti, the governor of Entre Ríos, yesterday celebrated the decision not to stage pickets by the environmentalists in Colón which he said "Sets the right example."

Busti said that the entire province continues to support the people of Gualeguaychú. However, he added that the protests give Montevideo its only legal argument to allow Botnia to continue constructing its mill on the banks of the River Uruguay, in the Uruguayan district of Río Negro. Buenos Aires Herald