Factories of discord between Uruguay and Argentina

November 22, 2007

When Tabare Vazquez headed Uruguay many left-wingers were optimistically looking at that «linkage» - Brazil with Lula, Uruguay with Vazquez and Argentina with Kirchner at the head. Though not completely left-wing rulers, but Center-left, and, what is especially important, - opponents of neo-liberal economic course of the previous governments.

As always, in reality everything turned out to be much more complicated. The «linkage» of the three states from the very beginning was undermined by the «quarrel» between Uruguay and Argentina because of construction of two pulp-and-paper mills (PPM) in the borderline area on the banks of the Uruguay river.

The Vazquez government followed the tastes of the world capital and did nothing to prevent that construction. After all that was the most dimensioned investment project in the history of Uruguay with total investment in the national economy of $1.8 billion.

Construction of two factories caused a large wave of protests not only in Uruguay but especially in the neighbouring Argentina that can also suffer from inevitable consequences for nature due to activity of pulp-and-paper mills.

The Argentina side thinks that construction of the mills will cause environmental pollution, in particular, the Uruguay river that separates the countries and will adversely affect the health of the people, living there. Residents of the Argentina neighbouring borderline towns Gualeguaychu, Colon and Concordia more than once used to completely block the roads and bridges leading to Uruguay thus protesting against construction of PPM.

Uruguay in its turn has blamed Argentina in attempts of economic discrimination. The Uruguayan side thinks that Argentina's claims are groundless as international ecological expertise that was carried out before, excluded any possibility of damage to the environment.

All attempts to settle the disputed issue at bilateral level turned to be a failure. And then Argentina brought a suit to the Hague international tribunal. However the court refused the claim of Argentina to Uruguay. With this, they totally neglected the law of 1975 between Argentina and Uruguay, according to which, construction of industrial facilities in the adjacent to the Uruguay river areas can be effected only upon agreement of the both sides.

And as for «conclusions» of the «international expertise» we can refer to the data of Rosprirodnadzor of Russia, according to which pulp-and-paper mills operating in Kaliningrad region «are the principal sources of pollution of water objects in the region of the Baltic sea».