Burma?? Euro Forest Deal Postponed

[cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

One and All, including Spiders,  if anyone cares to check up on this
company, perhaps they are doing business in Burma. They look pretty
creepy. Not to distract from priorities, its worth a call to their PR
dept, and can be done quickly enough if you find the adress and number.
Don't wait for the news to break, if you can break it yourself. Metta,
dawn star, paris
> 
> This news story is from the Environment News Service:
> http://www.envirolink.org/environews/ens/
> ---
> 
> ROMANIAN FOREST DEAL POSTPONED
> 
> By Alexandru R. Savulescu
> 
> The signing of a US$300 million contract for the exploitation of Romanian
> forests has been postponed by the newly elected government for alleged
> irregularities.
> 
> After checking the results of the negotiations for a contract between
> Tenneco Packaging srl and the Autonomous Regie Romsilva, the newly elected
> Romanian authorities requested, in February 1997, that the contract not be
> signed in the existing form and that it be renegotiated. Tenneco Packaging
> srl is a Romanian registered affiliate of the U.S. company Tenneco.
> 
> Under discussion since 1995, the deal offered access to cut Romanian wood
> to Tenneco in exchange of the building of forestry roads. Tenneco would cut
> around 2 million cubic meters of wood annually and use it either to supply
> its own furniture plant, under construction in Romania, or simply sell the
> wood on the Romanian market.
> 
> But the contract "offers the wood at a low price", while imposing "a high
> price per kilometer of built road", warned Gheorghe Manea, of the Romanian
> Association of Ecological Management and Sustainable Development.
> 
> The deal with Tenneco was negotiated at US$11.5 per cubic meter (roughly
> one-third of a cord), while the average price in Europe is between
> US$40-60, agrees Ioan Seceleanu, recently appointed Secretary of State in
> charge of forests at the Romanian Ministry of Waters, Forests and
> Environmental Protection. Moreover, the kilometer of forestry road built by
> Tenneco was valued at US$64,000, while a previous study conducted in
> Romania by the World Bank estimated the expenses to build a kilometer of
> road at only a quarter of that price, US$17,000.
> 
> Other irregularities were detected. The negotiations were direct, not by
> bid, says Seceleanu. There are no signed notes for the negotiating
> sessions, which makes it difficult for the Romanian authorities to find out
> who was responsible for what during the preparation of the would be contract.
> 
> "That is why the negotiations must be restarted from the beginning, on a
> more solid base", says Seceleanu. "From now on we want to negotiate
> directly with the US company, not with intermediaries, and we want the
> benefit of international juridical assistance, in order to be sure that if
> there will
> be a contract with Tenneco, it will be a win-win contract", adds the
> Secretary of State.
> 
> A deal offering to Tenneco Packaging srl, a Romanian registered filial of
> the U.S. company Tenneco, for the exploitation of 20% of the Romanian
> industrial production of wood over a period of 20 years was almost
> finalized in November 1996. The Autonomous Regie Romsilva announced the
> signing of a contract for February 1997.
> 
> The former Romanian authorities presented the negotiations as a success in
> attracting U.S. investments for the cash-hungry Romanian economy. Tenneco's
> president, Shwan Kelly, made, according to former Romanian authorities, "an
> intense pro-Romanian lobby before and after the visit of (former)
> president", Ion Iliescu, in 1995 to the U.S. At that moment, alarm signals
> came only from non-governmental organizations, who called the negotiations
> "a colonial deal."
> 
> ---
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