-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
http://www.ft.com/hippocampus/q3270c6.htm
World News / Americas
Gore attacked over Colombia oil project
By Matthew Jones
Environmentalists and
human rights activists
are accusing Al Gore,
the US vice-president
and candidate for the
Democratic party
presidential nomination,
of hypocrisy over his shareholding in an
oil company prospecting in Colombian
rainforests.
Mr Gore has targeted the environmental
and human rights vote as part of his
election campaign and was last week
rated "the most knowledgeable"
presidential candidate on green issues
by the influential League of Conservation
Voters.
But the U'wa Defense Working Group,
which represents the U'wa indigenous
tribe from the north east of Colombia,
says Mr Gore is inextricably linked with
Occidental Petroleum, the US oil group
which plans to start drilling on its
ancestral lands in the next few months in
search of an estimated 1.5bn barrels of
oil.
According to Mr Gore's official Public
Financial Disclosure Report for 1998, the
latest information available, the
vice-president owned between $250,000
and $500,000 in Occidental stock
inherited from his father, Albert Gore Sr,
who died in 1998. Mr Gore Sr became a
board member of Occidental Petroleum
after losing his Senate seat in 1970.
According to the Centre for Public
Integrity, a non-profit organisation that
analyses ethics in politics, Ray Irani, the
Occidental chief executive, made a
donation of $100,000 to the Democratic
National Committee in the early 90s
following a stay in the Lincoln Room of
the White House.
The campaign group is urging
environmentalists not to vote for Mr Gore
and to protest about his links to
Occidental on the campaign trail.
Neither the White House nor Mr Gore's
campaign team has responded to
requests for comment.
Stephen Kretzmann, U'wa campaign
co-ordinator for Amazon Watch, a
California-based environmental group,
said: "This will not look good for Al Gore
in the midst of an election campaign. It is
clear that he could stop the drilling with a
phone call and if he doesn't do
something about this he will lose the
environmental and human rights vote."
The U'wa, who number 5,000, first hit the
headlines in 1996 when they threatened
to commit collective suicide if
Occidental's drilling plans were not
halted.
The drill site falls 600m outside the
legally recognised U'wa Unified Reserve
but the tribe claims it is within larger,
traditional ancestral territory.
The UDWG claims development of the
site would be damaging to the tribe and
the environment because of the likely
increase in oil-related violence between
different armed factions in the politically
unstable region.
It says Occidental's existing pipeline has
been attacked more than 600 times in the
last 12 years leading to 2.1m barrels of
crude oil spilling into the soil and rivers,
and that U'wa members and
humanitarian workers have been killed or
injured in the cross-fire.
Occidental said earlier this month that it
planned to start building roads to the test
site at the end of January and would sink
the first test well at the site in May.
Ken Hufmann, Occidental's
vice-president of investor relations,
refused to comment on Mr Gore's stock
holding in the company or any political
donations that it had made.
He would say only: "We're moving ahead
with plans to drill the well but I have no
specific dates."
© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2000. "FT" and "Financial Times" are
trademarks of
The Financial Times.
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