Just Foreign Policy News
June 14, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
Video: Al Jazeera: UN says 45% unemployment under Gaza blockade
UNRWA says in a new report unemployment in Gaza in the second half of 2010 reached an unprecedented 45.2%, one of the highest rates in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQONfQmoofs
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24 Senators have signed Merkley-Lee-Udall letter for substantial drawdown
Including many, such as Sen. Franken, for whom it is their first act critical of the indefinite continuation of the war. The previous high-water mark was the 18 Senators who voted for the Feingold amendment in July 2010; three of those 18 are no longer in the Senate.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/933
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Gaza enters its fifth year of a full Israeli blockade by land, air and sea on Tuesday with unemployment at 45.2%, one of the highest rates in the world, according to the UN, Reuters reports. UNRWA found that by the second half of 2010, real wages had fallen 34.5% since the first half of 2006, when sanctions were imposed by Israel after Hamas won a Palestinian legislative election. The strict blockade began a year later.
"These are disturbing trends," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, "and the refugees, who make up two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million population, were the worst hit." He said: "It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution."
2) Writing on the UNRWA report, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times notes that one of the stated goals of Israel’s economic embargo on Gaza, which began four years ago, was to weaken Hamas and its grip on Gaza. But most of the new jobs last year were accounted for by the public sector, meaning the Hamas government; there was only a slight increase in private commerce.
"Hamas has been able to increase public employment by at least one-fifth," said Chris Gunness of UNRWA. "The policy of weakening Hamas seems to have failed but the policy has been highly successful at punishing the people of Gaza." He said that the number of Gazans coming to the agency because of special hardship, defined as earnings of $1.60 a day or less, had increased to 300,000 from 100,000 in the past four years. "The very poorest of the poor are the hardest hit," he said.
Israeli officials criticized the use of the so-called broad employment figures, which include the underemployed and those who have ceased looking for work – over more commonly used number of those recently looking for work. The narrower number for Gaza unemployment in 2010, according to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, is 37.8 percent.
3) Human rights groups in Gaza are urgently requesting that international aid groups deliver urgent medical aid to Palestinian hospitals in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports. Palestinian officials say Gaza’s medicinal stock is nearly empty and is in crisis. Poorly equipped hospitals have forced many Gazans to seek medical treatment in the West Bank and Israeli hospitals, but this requires an exit permit for each patient to pass through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, Al Jazeera notes.
4) US and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the country for decades, the Guardian reports. Russia, India, China, and Pakistan have all expressed concern about US plans, the Guardian says.
Big disagreements between US and Afghan officials include the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country against Iran or Pakistan, the Guardian says. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment.
There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with the Taliban. "It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future," a European diplomat says.
5) As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation. According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad-over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually-and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.
Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases "constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory." He notes a "bloated and anachronistic" Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.
6) The House approved Monday another rebuke of President Obama over the Libya campaign, the Washington Post reports. An amendment by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) to the bill that funds military construction and the VA says none of the money in the bill can be spent "in contravention of the War Powers Act." The amendment passed the House on a 248 to 163 vote. It’s unclear how this provision – if approved by the Senate – would affect real-world spending, the Post says [since the money being spent lies elsewhere, but if Sherman’s amendment were attached to the defense appropriation, expected next week, it would be a different story – JFP.]
7) A plurality of voters now opposes further U.S. military action in Libya, and most say Obama needs congressional approval to continue those operations, according to Rasmussen reports. [CBS reported last week that 6 in 10 were opposed – JFP.] Just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters feel the US should continue its military actions in Libya, Rasmussen says. Forty-two percent are opposed and 32% are undecided. 59% agree the president should get the approval of Congress if he wants to continue U.S. military action in Libya. This marks a jump in support for congressional authorization from mid-March, Rasmussen says.
Israel/Palestine
8) A former chief intelligence officer of the IDF says the assertion by Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel can’t defend itself in its 1967 borders is absurd, Yedioth Ahronoth reports. "[O]f course it is possible to defend Israel from the 1967 borders," Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Dov Tamari said. "After all, we managed to defend the state even during the War of Independence, in the 1956 campaign and in the Six-Day War, when the balance of forces between us and the enemy was much worse, and we did a pretty good job. What are we being told today? That it is impossible to defend ourselves against Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Palestinians, from the 1967 borders? What are they compared to the armies with which we fought?"
Mexico
9) About 70 percent of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a U.S. gun-tracing program came from the US, according to a report released by three U.S. senators Monday, AP reports. The report recommended background checks for sales at gun shows, a ban on the import of nonsporting weapons and the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in force in the US until 2004. Evidence that U.S. weapons trafficking has been fueling a bloody drug war that has cost more than 35,000 lives in Mexico since late 2006 has angered many Mexicans, AP says.
Costa Rica
10) U.S.-based Mallon Oil Company is invoking the CAFTA trade agreement to try to force Costa Rica to allow oil exploration, even though the Costa Rican government is opposed to oil exploration on environmental grounds, EFE reports.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Gaza jobless rate at 45%, five years after full blockade imposed
UN aid agency report criticises Israel for ‘a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many’
Reuters, Tuesday 14 June 2011 03.19 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/14/un-unrwa-report-blockade-gaza-unemployment
UNRWA report:
http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/201106083557.pdf
Jerusalem – The Gaza Strip enters its fifth year of a full Israeli blockade by land, air and sea on Tuesday with unemployment at 45.2%, one of the highest rates in the world, according to a UN aid agency report.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) found that by the second half of 2010, real wages had fallen 34.5% since the first half of 2006, when sanctions were imposed by Israel after Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, won a Palestinian legislative election. The UN says the strict blockade began a year later.
"These are disturbing trends," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, "and the refugees, who make up two-thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million population, were the worst hit." He said: "It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution."
Israel continues to blockade Gaza, controlling the flow of imports and tightly restricting access to Israeli territory mainly to urgent humanitarian cases, to prevent Hamas militants, who are supported by Iran and Syria from obtaining weapons, explosives and ammunition.
[…] [It seems probable that the preceding paragraph was not written by the reporter, but by an editor; an Israeli government document liberated by the Israeli NGO Gisha last year and reported by McClatchy confirmed that the purpose of the restrictions on imports and civilian movement was economic warfare, not stopping Hamas from receiving weapons – JFP.]
2) U.N. Charts High Jobless Rate in Gaza
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/middleeast/15gaza.html
Jerusalem – A report issued Tuesday shows unemployment in Gaza standing at 45.2 percent for the second half of 2010, one of the highest rates in the world and a record high for a six-month period in the Palestinian coastal strip, even though Israel eased its blockade in that period.
The report, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants, shows the jobless rate up over the first half of the year, with a loss of some 8,000 jobs.
But it also compared the second half of 2010 versus the same period the prior year, a common approach for economies where many jobs are seasonal. That number shows that unemployment fell 1.09 percent, a figure that is more in keeping with other international analyses of the Gazan economy.
One of the goals of Israel’s economic embargo on Gaza, which began four years ago, was to weaken Hamas and its grip on Gaza. But most of the new jobs last year were accounted for by the public sector, meaning the Hamas government; there was only a slight increase in private commerce.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations agency, said, "The hope was for a growth in the private sector but exports are at a standstill."
"Hamas has been able to increase public employment by at least one-fifth," he said. "The policy of weakening Hamas seems to have failed but the policy has been highly successful at punishing the people of Gaza."
He said that the number of Gazans coming to the agency because of special hardship, defined as earnings of $1.60 a day or less, had increased to 300,000 from 100,000 in the past four years. "The very poorest of the poor are the hardest hit," he said.
[…] Israeli officials said that the report seemed aimed at painting as bleak a picture as possible. They also criticized the use of the so-called broad employment figures, which include the underemployed and those who have ceased looking for work – over more commonly used number of those recently looking for work. The narrower number for Gaza unemployment in 2010, according to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, is 37.8 percent.
3) Gaza’s hospital stock running on near empty
Hospitals in Gaza are forced to cancel operations due to lack of medical supplies as the Israeli blockade continues.
Mohammed Omer, Al Jazeera, 12 Jun 2011 11:52
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/20116126552679412.html
Human rights groups in Gaza are urgently requesting that international aid groups and donor groups to intervene and deliver urgent medical aid to Palestinian hospitals in Gaza. Palestinian officials say that Gaza’s medicinal stock is nearly empty and is in crisis. This affects first aid care, in addition to all other levels of medical procedures.
Adham Abu Salmia, Gaza’s Ambulance and Emergency spokesman, says the medical crisis is acute and near catastrophic levels for patients within the health sector of Gaza. If shipment of medicines are not replenished to Gaza stocks in the coming weeks, he says it will worsen.
Dr Basim Naim, the minister of health in the de facto government of Gaza, says 178 types of necessary medications are at near zero balance in stock. He says more than 190 types of medicine in stock are either expired or are close to their expiry date, which has forced his administration to postpone several medical operations.
According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the shortage in stock represents 50 per cent of the total medicine on the inventory of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The shortage of medicine in the Gaza Strip goes back to 2006 – after Hamas won the majority electoral vote in the Gaza Strip – when newly imposed Israeli sanctions brought cuts to the budget of the Palestinian Authority, preventing or delaying vital medical aid from getting through to Gaza.
Dr Naim announced the "emergency situation" on the shortage of medicines and medical supplies. In a June 8 press conference he stated that his ministry "has been subjected to continuous humanitarian crises for several years … unlike previous medical crises, which affected a specific number of patients, these present crises will affect basic health service delivery for all patients".
On May 10, Dr Hassan Khalf, deputy minister of health in Gaza told Al Jazeera that Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital had to cancel all scheduled operations on eyes, blood vessels and nerves due to the shortages of medicines. "The crisis, exacerbated by the lack of medicines and essential items, has affected the delivery of service at Al Shifa hospital," he said.
[…] The health crisis involves more than medical supplies. Poorly equipped hospitals have forced many Gazans to seek medical treatment in the West Bank and Israeli hospitals, but this requires an exit permit for each patient to pass through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing.
Recently, Israel denied access to ten-month-old Ismail Salameh, who was to receive medical treatment in an Israeli hospital, a process coordinated and financially covered by Ramallah’s health ministry.
Ismail has since been receiving medical treatment at al-Rantisi hospital in Gaza. "My baby is bleeding on his brain," his mother said. "He requires an urgent transfer for medical treatment."
Although Israel has given several hundred exit permits to patients who need medical treatment outside the coastal strip, Gaza health officials accuse Israel of delaying permits and keeping patients waiting longer than necessary.
Abu Salmia, the spokesman for Gaza’s Ambulance and Emergency Department, admits that Gaza’s health conditions are reaching a critical level, requiring "more action and not just words".
4) Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades
Russia, China and India concerned about ‘strategic partnership’ in which Americans would remain after 2014
Jason Burke, Guardian, Monday 13 June 2011 17.38 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/us-afghanistan-secret-talks-on-security-partnership
Kabul – American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.
Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave – despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.
American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any "permanent" bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements. "There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently," a US official told the Guardian.
British troops, Nato officials say, will also remain in Afghanistan long past the end of 2014, largely in training or mentoring roles. Although they will not be "combat troops" that does not mean they will not take part in combat. Mentors could regularly fight alongside Afghan troops, for example.
Senior Nato officials also predict that the insurgency in Afghanistan will continue after 2014.
There are at least five bases in Afghanistan which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American special forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014. In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.
News of the US-Afghan talks has sparked deep concern among powers in the region and beyond. Russia and India are understood to have made their concerns about a long-term US presence known to both Washington and Kabul. China, which has pursued a policy of strict non-intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear. During a recent visit, senior Pakistani officials were reported to have tried to convince their Afghan counterparts to look to China as a strategic partner, not the US.
American negotiators will arrive later this month in Kabul for a new round of talks.
[…] Another [big disagreement] is the question of US troops launching operations outside Afghanistan from bases in the country. From Afghanistan, American military power could easily be deployed into Iran or Pakistan post-2014. Helicopters took off from Afghanistan for the recent raid which killed Osama bin Laden. "We will never allow Afghan soil to be used [for operations] against a third party," said Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser.
A third contentious issue is the legal basis on which troops might remain. Afghan officials are keen that any foreign forces in their country are subject to their laws. The Afghans also want to have ultimate authority over foreign troops’ use and deployment. "There should be no parallel decision-making structures … All has to be in accordance with our sovereignty and constitution," Spanta said.
Nor do the two sides agree over the pace of negotiations. The US want to have agreement by early summer, before President Barack Obama’s expected announcement on troop withdrawals. This is "simply not possible," the Afghan official said.
There are concerns too that concluding a strategic partnership agreement could also clash with efforts to find an inclusive political settlement to end the conflict with the Taliban. A "series of conversations" with senior insurgent figures are under way, one Afghan minister has told the Guardian. A European diplomat in Kabul said: "It is difficult to imagine the Taliban being happy with US bases [in Afghanistan] for the foreseeable future."
[…]
5) Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security
Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation, June 13, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/161378/around-globe-us-military-bases-generate-resentment-not-security
As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.
This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe-where the United States has a veritable empire of bases.
According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad-over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually-and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.
In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases "constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory." He notes a "bloated and anachronistic" Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany. "It makes as much sense for the Pentagon to hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to maintain a fleet of horses and buggies," writes Gusterson.
In a recent Italian documentary Standing Army, the late author and Nation contributor Chalmers Johnson says, "The unit of empire in the classic European empires was the colony. The unit for the American empire is not the colony, it’s the military base.… Things that can’t go on forever, don’t. That’s where we are today."
The bases-isolated from the host communities and, as Gusterson writes, "generating resentment against [their] prostitution, environmental damage, petty crime, and everyday ethnocentrism"-face growing opposition from local citizens.
[…]
6) House passes another Libya rebuke of Obama
David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post, 10:36 PM ET, 06/13/2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/house-passes-another-libya-rebuke-of-obama/2011/06/13/AGj0YtTH_blog.html
The House approved Monday an amendment designed as another symbolic rebuke of President Obama over the Libya campaign.
The amendment, authored by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), was added to a bill that funds military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It says that none of the money in the bill can be spent "in contravention of the War Powers Act."
That 1973 law requires the president to obtain congressional authorization after sending troops into combat. The deadline for that authorization passed last month without action from Congress.
The amendment passed the House on a 248 to 163 vote. It’s unclear how this provision – if approved by the Senate – would affect real-world spending. The White House has indicated it does not believe Obama has violated the law.
The House already passed a resolution rebuking Obama, and giving him 14 days to make the case for the Libya campaign and to explain U.S. goals there. Those answers are expected this week.
7) Just 26% Favor Continued Military Action in Libya
Rasmussen Reports, Monday, June 13, 2011
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2011/just_26_favor_continued_military_action_in_libya
A plurality of voters now opposes further U.S. military action in Libya, and most say President Obama needs congressional approval to continue those operations.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters feel the United States should continue its military actions in Libya. Forty-two percent (42%) are opposed and 32% are undecided.
But 59% agree the president should get the approval of Congress if he wants to continue U.S. military action in Libya. Twenty-one percent (21%) say congressional approval is not needed. Another 20% are not sure.
This marks a jump in support for congressional authorization from mid-March just after the president committed U.S. military forces to helping anti-government rebels in Libya.
At that time, 47% said the president should have gotten congressional approval before ordering the military into action in Libya. Thirty-four percent (34%) said the prior approval of Congress was not necessary, but 19% were undecided.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
8) Bibi, It is Possible to Defend Israel from the 1967 Border Lines
Ronen Bergman and Binyamin Tobias, Yedioth Ahronoth, June 10, 2011
http://peacenow.org/entries/bibi_it_is_possible_to_defend_israel_from_the_1967_border_lines
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress reminded Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Dov Tamari–the former commander of the [legendary commando unit] Sayeret Matkal and who was the first chief intelligence officer in the IDF in the 1970s–of a story from the days of the beginning of his military career.
Tamari: "In the officers’ course I did in 1956, we trained not far from Rosh Haayin. The scenario we were given in some of the drills was one that we recited like this: ‘an enemy cell has broken through from Tulkarm in order to bisect Israel into two. You are the company commander, you have two submachine guns and a mortar, prevent the country from being bisected into two.’ In 1956, this scenario elicited a smile from us, but when the prime minister says this in a speech to Congress and explains to the entire world that we will be incapable of defending ourselves against terror organizations that come from across the 1967 borders, I don’t find it funny at all."
Q: What infuriates you about this statement?
"As I see it, one of the IDF’s problems and of the politicians in general, is sometimes their thinking. They think, but only about what they have to think that minute. But when you recite, over and over, an accepted slogan and present it as statesmanship, for example: ‘it is impossible to defend the State of Israel from the 1967 borders’–I find that to be very problematic."
Q: Why?
"Because of course it is possible to defend Israel from the 1967 borders. After all, we managed to defend the state even during the War of Independence, in the 1956 campaign and in the Six-Day War, when the balance of forces between us and the enemy was much worse, and we did a pretty good job. What are we being told today? That it is impossible to defend ourselves against Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Palestinians, from the 1967 borders? What are they compared to the armies with which we fought? In other words, I conclude from this that this is a [negotiating] position and that there is a very strong desire to believe in it, regardless of the reality on the ground."
[…]
Mexico
9) US report: 70 percent of arms seized, traced in Mexico came from US
Associated Press, June 13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/us-report-70-percent-of-arms-seized-traced-in-mexico-came-from-us/2011/06/13/AGR2TlTH_story.html
Mexico City – About 70 percent of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a U.S. gun-tracing program came from the United States, according to a report released by three U.S. senators Monday.
Of the 29,284 firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico in 2009 and 2010, 20,504 came from the United States, according to figures provided to the senators by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Most of those weapons – 15,131 – were U.S. made, while another 5,373 were of foreign manufacture but had moved through the United States into Mexico.
The ATF said the remainder of the weapons total – 8,780 arms – were of "undetermined origin due to insufficient information provided."
The figure of the number of guns arriving in Mexico from north of the border has been polemical ever since a June 2009 U.S. report covering earlier years said that 87 percent of guns seized in Mexico came from the United States.
While the report did not specify why the percentage had changed, the most recent figures appear to [have] included more gun-trace reports, as the reporting program in Mexico became easier to use.
Evidence that U.S. weapons trafficking has been fueling a bloody drug war that has cost more than 35,000 lives in Mexico since late 2006 has angered many Mexicans.
On Saturday, in a speech to the Mexican-American community in San Jose, California, President Felipe Calderon lashed out at the U.S. weapons industry. "I accuse the U.S. weapons industry of (responsibility for) the deaths of thousands of people that are occurring in Mexico," Calderon said. "It is for profit, for the profits that it makes for the weapons industry."
The report, issued by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and two other senators, recommended background checks for sales at gun shows, a ban on the import of nonsporting weapons and the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in force in the United States until 2004.
Calderon endorsed calls for reinstating the ban on domestic sales of assault rifles, saying its expiration in 2004 may have played a roll in the increase of drug violence in Mexico. "You can clearly see how the violence began to grow in 2005, and of course it has gone on an upward spiral in the last six years," Calderon said.
Costa Rica
10) U.S. oil company demands contract from Costa Rica
EFE, Friday, June 10, 2011
http://www.ticotimes.net/Business-Real-Estate/U.S.-oil-company-demands-contract-from-Costa-Rica_Friday-June-10-2011
The Mallon Oil Company is pressuring Laura Chinchilla’s government to allow for oil and natural gas exploration within Costa Rica.
U.S.-based Mallon Oil Company invoked the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to pressure Costa Rica’s government to sign a contract that will allow for exploration of oil and natural gas in the northern part of the country, according to the daily La Nación.
Two letters sent in the past seven months by representatives of the U.S. company warned that Costa Rican officials would face "legal, economic and international consequences" if the 11-year-old exploration contract is not honored. The first letter was sent November 2010 to Foreign Trade Minister Anabel Gonzáles, and a second one was sent March 31 to Costa Rica’s ambassador in Washington, D.C., Muni Figueres.
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla said Tuesday she would consider supporting exploration and production of natural gas, but not oil.
In 2000, Mallon Oil Company won a 20-year concession for exploration and production of oil and natural gas in northern Costa Rica, but some 200 court appeals have until now blocked the concession. Last April, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court turned down the final appeal.
Chinchilla said her administration intends to "limit this process to just natural gas, leaving oil exploration out of the contract."
If Costa Rica’s Ministry of the Envi-ronment, Energy and Telecommunications (MINAET) signs the agreement, Mallon Oil Company would receive a concession to explore and exploit in the Northern Zone and near the country’s north Caribbean coast, including near the cities of San Carlos, Sarapiquí and Pococí.
[…] Mallon Oil Company has spent the last decade trying to obtain the required permits to start oil and gas exploration here. It first started business in the country in 2000. Back then, former president Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998-2002) authorized the company to start oil explorations after winning a public bidding.
However, a series of appeals filed by the Justice for Nature organization kept the firm from signing the contract for 10 years.
Chinchilla evaluated the possibility of involving state-run enterprises such as the Costa Rican Petroleum Refinery (RECOPE) and the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) to prevent the natural gas from going exclusively to the U.S. company.
"Natural gas is less of a pollutant [than oil] and could proved to be an important alternative fuel," Chinchilla explained, while also noting that the country in the past has relied to heavily on industries that are tied to heavy pollution, like mining, to bring economic growth.
"We are evaluating the criteria of timeliness and convenience, and especially the review is being directing toward satisfying public interest and to respecting the principles of environmental protection," Costa Rica’s president said.
Costa Rica is not an oil-producing country, but it’s suspected that the country has oil in the north and on the Caribbean. Environmentalists and political opponents have long opposed oil exploration within the country.
In 2002, then-President Abel Pacheco imposed a moratorium on oil exploration and in 2003 struck down a concession to U.S. business Harken Holdings, which led to a suit that still has not been resolved. Pacheco felt petroleum exploration was too harmful to the environment.
Harken Costa Rica Holdings LLC, subsidiary of the U.S. Harken Energy, received a 20-year concession to look for and exploit oil resources in the province of Limón, 188 kilometers northeast of San José.
However, the contract was criticized by environmental groups in the area and in 2002, the Technical Secretariat of the Environment Ministry ruled that the project was not viable because it affected the Caribbean’s natural ecosystem.
–
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