Mr Gore has refused to answer environmentalists’
calls to intercede or to talk to the press about
the U’wa case. Protesters are dogging his every
step, disrupting campaign appearances and
sponsoring adverts attacking him
WASHINGTON – Al Gore’s links to a controversial oil firm and a South
American tribe’s threat of mass suicide have put the Vice-President’s
campaign for the presidency on the defensive.
The Democratic candidate, who claims to be a champion of the
environment, is under attack from activists over his silence on Occidental
Petroleum’s multibillion-dollar drilling project in an area of Colombian rainforest
that an indigenous tribe claims as ancestral lands. The U’wa, a
5,000-strong tribe who inhabit a patch of remote cloud forest in the
Colombian Andes, entered the US presidential race after Occidental was
given permission by the Colombian Government to explore land a few
hundred yards from their reservation.
Their protests against the proposal to drill for oil have resulted in
violent clashes with police and the death of three American
environmentalists, apparently at the hands of revolutionary guerrillas
that the tribe had said would move into the area if oil exploration
began.
The U’wa, who say they would rather die than see “the blood of Mother
Earth” removed, have threatened to commit mass suicide by hurling
themselves off a cliff, as many of their ancestors did to avoid being
brought under Spanish rule in the 17th century.
Mr Gore has refused to answer environmentalists’ calls to intercede or
to talk to the press about the U’wa case. Protesters are dogging his every
step, disrupting campaign appearances and sponsoring adverts attacking
him.
“Gore can make a difference. He can save the U’wa and avert a public
relations disaster for himself by intervening now,” Lauren Sullivan, of
Rainforest Action Network, said.
The Vice-President’s father, the former Senator Albert Gore Sr, owed
much of his wealth to Occidental’s late chairman, the billionaire Armand
Hammer. Hammer, who was quoted as saying that he had Mr Gore Sr “in my
back pocket”, was a wheeler-dealer who acted as a gobetween for the
United States and the Soviet Union from the days of Lenin to Gorbachev. He
counted Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher among his friends and
pleaded guilty to making illegal donations to Richard Nixon’s re-election
campaign.
Mr Gore Sr was given a $ 500,000-a-year job with Occidental when he left
the Senate and benefited from a deal in which Occidental bought
mineral-rich land close to the Gore family farm, sold it to the family
and then paid the Gores $ 20,000 a year for the mineral rights. The
Vice-President is still collecting cheques from this deal, although
another company is now paying for the rights. He also owns shares in
Occidental worth up to $ 500,000 (Pounds 317,000).
Since Mr Gore joined the Clinton ticket in 1992, according to a study by
the Centre for Public Integrity, Occidental has contributed more than $
470,000 to the Democratic Party, including a $ 100,000 cheque that was
written two days after the present chairman, Ray Irani, stayed in the
Lincoln bedroom at the White House, and $ 35,550 to Mr Gore himself.
In 1995, on Al Gore’s recommendation, the Clinton Administration did
what Nixon and Reagan had tried and failed to do, offering the 47,000-acre
Elk Hills oilfield in California for sale. Occidental was the highest
bidder, paying $ 3.65billion to triple its American reserves.
“It was the largest privatisation of federal property in US history,”
Charles Lewis, of the Centre for Public Integrity, said. “Despite his
public reputation as a staunch environmentalist, Gore recommended that
the President approve giving oil companies access to this publicly owned
land.”
As he maintains his silence on Occidental and the U’wa, Mr Gore is
trying to turn his greatest vulnerability – the campaign finance scandals of
the last presidential election – into an asset by making campaign finance
reform a key plank of his general election manifesto. In an interview
with The New York Times yesterday, he said that he had made mistakes in
attending a now notorious fundraiser at a Buddhist temple and making
fundraising calls from the White House.
“I have learnt from those mistakes,” he said, “and I am passionate about
the need for reform.”
