MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pulp mills conflict: Uruguay will take the case to WTO

Uruguay announced the filing of a complaint against Argentina before the World Tourism Organization for the continuous obstruction by Argentine pickets of the bridges linking with Uruguay which threaten to cause significant losses in the coming Southern hemisphere summer season.

Argentine pickets are protesting the construction of a 1.2 billion US dollars pulp mill on the Uruguayan side of the river which divides both countries alleging pollution and are demanding a relocation of the plant which Uruguay refuses point blank, supported by environmental impact assessments from the World Bank which is partially financing the huge investment.

Uruguay's Tourism Minister Hector Lezcano made the announcement at the end of the Monday cabinet meeting in Montevideo, following a weekend with the two main bridges linking Argentina and Uruguay blocked impeding all movement of people and goods between the neighboring countries.

In the summer season hundreds of thousands of Argentines flock across to Uruguayan beaches, most of them through the bridges and Uruguay fears a repeat of last year's season (2005/06) which proved to be substantially weaker than expected because of the pickets.

Minister Lezcano said that during Monday's cabinet meeting President Tabare Vazquez made a brief report on the Cochabamba South American Nations Community summit held over the weekend and revealed that he had a short "friendly encounter" with Argentina's vice president Daniel Scioli and Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Taiana. However President Nestor Kirchner was absent from the summit in Bolivia.

"Uruguay in the coming days will formalize a protest before the World Tourism Organization, a United Nations office, detailing with documents the mounting economic losses as a result of the Argentine pickets" in Gualeguaychu and Colon, across from Fray Bentos and Paysandu in Uruguay, said Lezcano.

Finland's Botnia which is responsible for the Orion pulp mill plant is keeping to the construction timetable and is scheduled to begin production next September/October.

"In the framework of the Uruguayan government policy it was considered convenient that the WTO protest should be added to the current legal activities displayed by the Foreign Affairs ministry regarding the controversy", underlined Lezcano.

The escalating controversy with Argentina already has been taken to the International Court of The Hague and a Mercosur disputes tribunal, plus the good offices of the King of Spain who is trying to "facilitate" the resumption of dialogue between the neighboring countries.

But Argentina has refused to use force against the pickets arguing that they have the right to "freely express" their environmental concerns and the President Vazquez administration position is that no dialogue is possible as long as pickets are blocking access to Uruguay.

The issue figures in the agenda of Mercosur next summit in Brazil although all issues must be considered by consensus.