MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — President Tabare Vazquez has authorized the startup of a Botnia wood pulp plant on Uruguay's river border with Argentina, triggering renewed objections Friday from Buenos Aires about a project that repeatedly has tested relations between the neighbors for two years.
Environmental Minister Mariano Arana said a Finnish-led consortium had been given the green light late Thursday to immediately launch operations. The decision came as Vazquez was attending the Iberoamerican Summit in Santiago, Chile, and a brief announcement was posted on a government Web site.
Arana said he had received a call from the president's office informing him of the decision. ''It is now up to the business operators to decide at what exact moment they will start actual operations and begin producing wood pulp,'' the base ingredient for making paper, he said. The paper is exported to the United States, Europe and Asia.
Uruguayan authorities said the $1.2 billion (euro820 million) Finnish-built plant — the biggest foreign investment project in the country's history — will not cause undue harm to the environment.
That claim, however, has been vehemently rejected by Argentine environmentalists who have protested the project by sporadically blockading international bridge crossings to Uruguay for nearly two years.
Demonstrators say Uruguay's pulp mill will cause lasting environmental damage and undermine tourism in a pristine region of soybean and citrus-farming plantations. But Uruguay said its studies show there will be no such damage and pollutants will be kept within legal limits.
The Finnish consortium Oy Metsa-Botnia AB and Kymmene Corp., which built the sprawling plant, had no immediate comment.
In Buenos Aires, Argentine authorities said the start of operations had further harmed relations that had been badly strained between two once-friendly, center-left governments.
''The relation between Argentina and Uruguay has been badly damaged,'' Kirchner's top aide, Cabinet Chief Alberto Fernandez said early Friday. He expressed ''surprise'' at the timing of the decision which came as Vazquez, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and Spain's King Juan Carlos were in Chile for the annual Iberoamerican Summit. Carlos has served for a year a mediator between the two countries on the issue.
Approval for the launch of operations comes after Arana announced last week that the plant had passed all regulatory hurdles. Mountains of Uruguayan-grown eucalyptus trees had been piling up near the plant awaiting wood chipping and conversion into wood pulp.
The project is intended to create 600 jobs and boost Uruguay's exports by 15 percent. But Argentina is raising concerns about pollution by the plant in the river that marks the border with Uruguay.
Argentine television stations showed live footage of the plant belching smoke from a tall stack, apparently in preparation for the launch of operations.
