CORRECT: Argentina, Uruguay Pulp Mill Spat Moves To International Court
BUENOS AIRES -(Dow Jones)- A bitter, long-running dispute over construction of a pulp mill on the Uruguayan side of the river that separates it from Argentina on Monday moved to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Argentina's government, which filed the case at the ICJ in May 2006, on Monday began a four-day exposition of its arguments to the 17 ICJ judges.
Argentina claims that Uruguay, by not consulting with its neighbor, violated a bilateral environmental treaty aimed at safeguarding the Uruguay River.
Uruguay rejects those assertions, and has countered that the Argentine government's refusal to end a nearly three-year blockade by protesters of a bridge between the two countries has cost it at least $400 million in lost trade. The Uruguayan team will present its case Sept. 21-24.
After the initial presentations, the third week is reserved for rebuttals, with Argentina presenting Sept. 28-29.
Uruguay won a preliminary round at the ICJ in July 2006, when the court refused to halt construction of the mill, which was undertaken by Finnish consortium Metsa-Botnia Oy at a cost of about $1.1 billion.
The pulp mill, which began operations in the third quarter of 2007, adds 2% to Uruguay's gross domestic product and accounts for about 8% of exports, according to the World Bank, which helped finance construction. The judges are expected to decide the case sometime in early or mid-2010, according to a press release from law firm Foley Hoag LLP, which is representing Uruguay.
-By Shane Romig and Matthew Cowley, Dow Jones Newswires; 54-11-4103-6738; shane.romig@dowjones.com
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Publié le 14 septembre 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones
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