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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: asenna1 who wrote (4842)	11/5/2000 8:05:33 AM
From: D.Austin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

I looked and i found in about 1.3 minutes. POLITICS-RIGHTS: LAWYER ACCUSED OF EXAGGERATING TIES TO TRIBE WASHINGTON, (Nov. 1) IPS - A U.S. attorney who warned that voting for the U.S. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader would hurt an indigenous tribe in Colombia is coming under fire by activists who say the lawyer misrepresented his relationship with the group. In an opinion piece submitted to large U.S. college newspapers in states where presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush are running neck and neck, Spencer Adler, a Washington-based lawyer, wrote that voting for Nader instead of Vice Pres. Gore would not benefit the U'wa tribe. Adler, who said in the article that he was the original attorney who took up the tribe's case against Occidental Petroleum, argues that Nader's campaign will only take votes away from Gore and help elect Republican candidate Bush. Gore has been hounded by environmentalists who are blasting the Democratic candidate's ties to a U.S. oil company that is planning on drilling for oil on land claimed by the U'wa. "You'll be sacrificing the tribe's best interests for Ralph Nader's," says Adler's letter. "And the U'wa won't owe you their thanks. You'll owe them your apology." Adler's piece was widely circulated by the Democratic National Committee and distributed electronically by the Sierra Club, an environmental group here that has endorsed Gore. Environmental activists working closely with the tribe immediately condemned the article as misleading, saying that the true attorney for the U'wa is in fact Martin Wagner, who works with Earthjustice, an environmental law group in California. "The Democratic National Committee, by widely circulating this false and misleading statement, has deliberately used the U'wa people for their own political gain," says Steve Kretzmann, an activist with Amazon Watch. The 5,000-strong U'wa tribe, which lives in the tropical rainforest of the Andes near the Venezuelan border, has threatened mass suicide if Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum proceeds with its oil operations on land claimed by the tribe. In a later statement, Adler clarified his relationship with the U'wa, saying that he does not represent the tribe. He told IPS that he did at one time represent the tribe against Occidental and he helped draft a shareholder resolution to protect the tribe. "The primary lawyer for the U'wa from the very beginning -- well before I'd even heard of the case -- is Martin Wagner," said Adler's later statement. The attorney added that he would give a $5,000 check to Amazon Watch's campaign to help the tribe. Asked to clarify his relationship with the Democratic National Committee, he replied: "I'm just a private attorney, speaking as an individual." Kretzmann acknowledged that Adler worked with activists to help draft the shareholder resolution. "But at best, Adler has been a peripheral ally," he told IPS. Kretzmann is part of the U'wa Defense Working Group which formed after three U.S. citizens working with the tribe were killed in Colombia by a rebel guerrilla organization. In a statement released today, the working group underlined that it is non-partisan and does not endorse any political candidate. For more than two years, however, several organizations that are part of the working group, like Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, have been conducting a campaign to bring the tribe's plight to the attention of Gore. "The Vice President's failure to respond in any substantive way is a direct threat to the survival of the U'wa people," says Shannon Wright of the Rainforest Action Network. Gore's father spent 28 years as an Occidental employee and the former CEO of the company, Armand Hammer, was a close family friend. According to the vice president's latest personal financial disclosure form, Gore also holds up to $1 million of the company's stock. The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan group that tracks money's influence on politics, said "there is probably no company in America today that is as close personally and financially to the Vice President as Occidental Petroleum." Gore said that he has directed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to raise the U'wa land dispute with Colombian Pres. Andres Pastrana. But activists say that Gore should immediately endorse a suspension of drilling on land claimed by the tribe. In late September, more than 90 trucks transporting oil drilling machinery entered land which the U'wa say is "ancestral territory." The tribe says about 3,000 military personnel were escorting the machinery. Drilling is expected to start in coming weeks. While the government argues that the oil project is located outside the demarcated indigenous reserve, the U'wa say all land within what was known as the Samore Block -- even that not encompassed by the designated reserve -- is its sacred ancestral territory. In early October, the main U'wa organizations, including the U'wa Tribal Council and the U'wa Traditional Authorities sent a letter to Vice Pres. Gore urging him to take action to stop the oil exploitation. "We don't want to have to hold you responsible for the destruction of our culture," it said.