MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine top magistrate cautions pickets blocking bridge leading to Uruguay

Supreme Court president Ricardo Lorenzetti

Argentina’s Supreme Court president Ricardo Lorenzetti said that the blockade by Argentine pickets impeding, since 2006 crossing to neighbouring Uruguay, to protest the construction of a pulp mill, is “unsustainable”.

“Society can’t function in this manner. You can’t sustain a blockade for so long”, said Lorenzetti in a Sunday interview with Perfil.

“One thing is to make a point public when institutions are not functioning as happened during the 2002 crisis, but besides that there’s no justification”, said the magistrate. He added that there are “invisible costs in social conflicts” and warned about possible clashes between those blocking the bridge and those opposed to it.

Pickets that have been blocking access to the international bridge since 2006 marched Saturday in the city of Gualeguaychú where the original movement against Finland’s Botnia-UPM pulp mill on the Uruguayan side originated, to ratify their position in support of the blockade.

The march was in reply to statements from Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who said that if “Justice acted in consequence” this would mark the end of the blockade of the international bridge linking Gualeguaychú with Fray Bentos in Uruguay where the pulp mill is located.

Last week the Argentine government confirmed it would not repress pickets. However Interior minister Florencio Randazzo said that a court order was needed for security forces to move in and dislodge the bridge.

Meantime in Uruguay local authorities expressed their “expectations and hope” with regards to the possibility that the Argentine Judicial system will order the lifting of the roadblocks.

“Whenever there is a small window of opportunity that could allow us to end these roadblocks and conflicts that we've been dealing with for five years, we express our hope” and expectations, said Omar Lafluff the mayor of Uruguay's Río Negro department where the pulp mill is located.

Lafluff said that “when President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was here, last week in Uruguay, she spoke about the issue as though the solution relies on the Argentine judicial system.”

Despite the advances, he said that he would have liked “for this to be said a couple of years ago” and for the responsibility to be put into action.

“My personal opinion is that there is a great responsibility here from the Argentine government, who has supported the work of the Gualeguaychú assembly and who, for five years, has done nothing to end the roadblocks,” said the politician when speaking on the radio.

Lafluff insisted that “Argentina's government should have ended” the issue a long time ago, adding that Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica “is doing everything he can.”

The pulp mill plant “is on Uruguayan territory and meets the requirements of our country. We have to share the river and control it, but there is no chance that we will control an industrial installation on Argentine soil,” said Lafluf.