The event was replete with symbolism. Uruguay’s President José Mujica and Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández together launched a new high-speed catamaran dramatically cutting the journey time between Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Christened Francisco, in the Pope’s honour, and with Fernández as godmother, the catamaran’s launch was designed to demonstrate that Uruguay and Argentina are closer than ever. If the physical distance between the two countries appears to have been reduced, however, the diplomatic distance is increasing. Once again, the Uruguayan pulp mill in Fray Bentos is poisoning relations; how much it is poisoning the shared river is the big question and one which might end up being taken up by the International Court of Justice at The Hague – again.
The LNG-propelled ferry launched by Presidents Mujica and Fernández on 30 September will cut the length of the voyage between Buenos Aires and Montevideo by a third; it will now take just two hours to get between the two capitals in comparison with other ferries used by the binational maritime company Buquebus.
Naming the ship Francisco was intended to bestow a papal blessing on ties and it prompted Sergio Urribarri, the provincial governor of Entre Ríos, the province located directly opposite the pulp mill on the banks of the River Uruguay, to suggest that the Pope would be well placed to mediate between the two countries. The Vatican declined the poisoned chalice.
It is not as if the Finnish owners of the pulp mill, UPM (formerly Botnia), made a request last week to the Uruguayan government to approve an increase in production at the mill from 1m tonnes to 1.2m tonnes. Uruguay raised the issue at the administrative committee of the Uruguay River (Caru) back in March 2012. The Argentine foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, claimed that Argentina requested additional technical information, but had only received answers to 11 of its 21 questions and, as such, had not responded to the request. The Uruguayans accuse Argentina of choosing to ignore the request.
Unable to reach an agreement with Argentina, Mujica was left in an invidious position: grant unilateral approval to UPM and risk upsetting Argentina; or reject the request to increase production and upset UPM while risking looking politically weak at home.
Timerman ratcheted up the pressure on Uruguay by threatening to return to The Hague if Mujica opted to make a unilateral decision on the matter, adamant that the ICJ ruling in 2010 was based on “an annual limit of 1m tonnes” and that anything else was a game changer which invalidated this ruling.
In the end Mujica did his best to find a balance. On 2 October he granted approval to UPM to increase production – but only by 100,000 tonnes per year (half its request) and only on condition that it implement new environmental safeguards in order to minimise the impact of the increase in production. These include a cooling tower to ensure the temperature of wastewaters entering the river is below 30 degrees, and a reduction of the phosphorus content of the effluents. “The small ditches on my farm generate more phosphorus than the UPM plant,” Mujica quipped while speaking during a private event at the Instituto del Niño y el Adolescente del Uruguay (INAU).
Timerman was singularly unimpressed. He swiftly responded that Argentina was left with no alternative but to return to The Hague unless Uruguay reversed its unilateral decision. Answer came there none as Mujica instructed his government to preserve a dignified ‘silence’ to avoid stirring up more tension. Mujica’s implication that it would not be possible to have a rational discussion with Argentina so close to legislative elections (on 27 October), which are crucial for the political future of Kirchnerismo, was testily dismissed by Urribarri as “offensive and unacceptable”. Urribarri has not received the public support of other governors, and a motion in the senate from the Kirchnerista Pedro Gustavino (representing Entre Ríos) rejecting Uruguay’s decision got nowhere.
Timerman’s announcement on 9 October that Argentina would wait “a couple of days” before returning to The Hague prompted Mujica to assert that “Only God gives ultimatums”.
Timerman maintained that a report from Argentine scientists on a binational scientific committee had shown that the temperature of the effluents from the pulp mill was higher than permitted, and noted the presence of carbolic acid, phosphorous, chromium, nickel and the pesticide endosulfan. He claimed that Uruguay had “violated the mechanism of information and consultation agreed between both our countries on eight occasions”.
Intriguingly, the Uruguayan scientists on the team, who were not shown the Argentine report, reached rather different conclusions. Uruguay’s national daily El País revealed that they had reported that none of the 26 water samples taken between June 2011 and July 2013 in areas close to the plant had a higher concentration of effluents than permitted; that the level of phosphorous was well below the maximum authorised; and that no endosulfan had been detected.
The Uruguayan scientists also found that the level of pollution was significantly higher in 25 samples taken in the mouth of the river Gualeguaychú, an Argentine tributary of the River Uruguay by the eponymous town opposite Fray Bentos, over the same period. Mujica said that people needed to be informed better, pointing out that Timerman had neglected to mention that the levels of endosulfan were 10 times higher by the mouth of the river Gualeguaychú.
Uruguayan opposition reacts
By and large Mujica has tried to avoid being drawn on the dispute, saying he would wait until after his Argentine counterpart Cristina Fernández convalesces from surgery to remove a blood clot on her brain, and the Argentine elections are over.
There has been no such reticence on the part of the Uruguayan opposition. The presidential pre-candidate for the opposition Partido Nacional (Blancos), Jorge Larrañaga, accused Timerman of “barefaced lies” and Argentina of violating Uruguay’s “national sovereignty” and “right to development”.
Former president Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990, 1995-2000), of the Partido Colorado, accused the Mujica administration of being too passive with Argentina (an habitual complaint) in the face of “gross distortion of the facts”. He actually complained that the government had seen fit to condition the increase in production by UPM on improved environmental safeguards, arguing that this merely confirmed Argentina in its suspicions that “we are doing now what we should have done before”. He said that “the alleged political affinity” between Mujica and Kirchnerismo had not helped at all
*The national congress of (Uruguay’s 19 departmental) intendants unanimously voted to support the Mujica administration’s decision. “I think our big brothers (in Argentina and Brazil) instead of throwing us a buoyancy aid to save us are chucking us an anchor,” the intendant of Soriano, Guillermo Besozzi, complained.
On 6 October some 1,000 residents of Gualeguaychú tried to march to Uruguay to protest against the Mujica administration’s decision but they were blocked from crossing the San Martín international bridge which links Argentina to the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos.
Sergio Urribarri, the governor of the Argentine province of Entre Ríos in which Gualeguaychú is located, accused Mujica of causing the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) to fail. This must have touched a raw nerve in Uruguay where the opposition has been agitating for the Mujica administration to take a much tougher line over Argentine trade protectionism which contravenes a core principle of the customs union - the free movement of goods. The real failing of Mercosur, which the renewed diplomatic tension between Argentina and Uruguay once again highlights, is its institutional weakness; 22 years after its formation Mercosur lacks a working supranational dispute resolution body capable of resolving differences between founding members.
