MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK bows to mining project, vetoes law protection glaciers

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has vetoed a law protecting Argentina's glaciers that would have restricted mining and oil drilling, officials and environmental campaigners said on Friday.

The law, which was passed by Congress last month, might have complicated plans by the world's biggest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp, to build a 2.4 billion US dollar mine straddling the snowy Andean peaks between Argentina and Chile. But the President used her veto, saying in a decree that governors in Andean provinces feared the glacier law could threaten economic development in their regions. "Banning mining and oil exploration and extraction ... would give environmental considerations pre-eminence over activities that could be undertaken in a way that protects the environment" said the decree, published earlier this week in the Argetnine government's Official Gazette. It said it "was excessive" to ban mining or oil drilling activity on glaciers and in so-called peri-glacial areas that border glaciers. A Mining Secretariat source, who asked not to be named, said the law contained "imprecisions" that would have impeded various activities â€" not just mining. Environmental campaigners condemned the government's veto of the glacier law, which they saw as a vital tool to protect and study glaciers in the face of global warming. (BAH)