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VERSIÓN ESPAÑOL
Fricción rioplatense
El acuerdo diplomático de la disputa por las papeleras entre Argentina y Uruguay tiene un período muy estrecho entre las dos fechas clave que lo llevan en direcciones opuestas: las elecciones del 28 de octubre en este país, que son una invitación constante a tomar posturas nacionalistas, y la cumbre iberoamericana del 8 de noviembre en Chile, que presiona para un acuerdo ya que ambos lados del conflicto y su “facilitador” real, el Rey Juan Carlos de España, estarán presentes, necesitándose con urgencia al menos una solución incipiente si no se quiere ofender gravemente los buenos oficios de la Corona Española. Los desafíos a la diplomacia resultan mayores dado que los cancilleres de ambos países apenas son siquiera actores de reparto en esta saga.
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The diplomatic settlement of the pulp mill dispute between Argentina and Uruguay has a very narrow window between two key dates which are carrying it in opposite directions: the October 28 elections here, which are a constant invitation for nationalistic posturing, and the November 8 Ibero-American summit in Chile, which pressures an agreement since the two sides of the dispute and their royal mediator King Juan Carlos of Spain will all be present with every need for at least an incipient solution if the Spanish crown’s good offices are not to be gravely affronted. The challenges to diplomacy are all the greater given that the foreign ministers of the two countries are hardly even supporting actors in this saga.
The latest revival of escalation has come from Uruguayan Housing and Environment Minister Mariano Arana, who announced on Wednesday that the official permit to commence pulp production at the controversial Botnia plant in Fray Bentos could come “in less than a month,” i.e. before October 28, thus breaking a tacit understanding that the mill would not start work beforehand in order to keep this thorny issue out of Argentina’s election campaign. This provocative initiative was presumably a response to renewed aggression from President Néstor Kirchner (under pressure from militant activists from the Entre Ríos city of Gualeguaychú facing Fray Bentos across the River Uruguay), who on Monday said that his determination to force the relocation of the mill had not wavered since the first day of the dispute — equally the breach of a tacit understanding that Argentina has ceased to deny the reality of the plant over the past six months and would settle for an environmental monitoring agreement once the elections are over. Neither Arana nor Kirchner is a diplomat and yet they make all the running in this bilateral dispute, forming part of a political problem which impedes any diplomatic solution.
The handling of the pulp mill dispute is a race against time along two different tracks which are increasingly hard to keep parallel. On the one hand, electioneering is likely to drive the Kirchner administration into a constant escalation of grandstanding which Uruguayan national pride will not brook easily, even if the pressures on the Montevideo government are political rather than electoral. Yet in only 10 days the two countries will have to converge for the Santiago summit because a humiliation of the Spanish crown’s mediation would risk mortally offending the Kirchner administration’s chief ally in the developed world. It will not be easy.
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