Ilisu dam in jeopardy as Balfour drops out

Mortal blow for controversial £1.25bn project flooding Kurds' land

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Guardian

Wednesday November 14, 2001


The controversial Ilisu dam project in Turkey, personally backed by Tony Blair, has been dropped by Balfour Beatty, the company that led the international consortium which would have drowned the Kurdish homelands.

The £1.25bn project to dam the Tigris, first revealed in the Guardian in March 1999, needed the backing of the export credit departments of nine countries to make it viable, with the UK in the lead.

The giant construction firm said yesterday it had decided to pull out because the "commercial, social and environmental" issues were unlikely to be resolved soon.

Balfour Beatty's Italian partner, Impregilo, also abandoned the project yesterday. Environmental and human rights groups were jubilant.

The surprise announcement follows speculation last week that the prime minister was resolutely behind the Ilisu dam, partly because of pressure from the Turkish government, which wanted a reward for its help in providing bases for the bombing of Afghanistan.

Robin Cook, who at the time of the original proposal was foreign secretary, was among cabinet members reportedly opposed to it.

The project had provoked an international outcry by environmental and human rights groups, and diplomatic objections from Syria and Iraq, which claimed it interferred with their rights to water from the river Tigris and that they had not been consulted.

The Arab League warned the British government against backing the project.

In response to pressure, the government set four conditions before it would back the project to the tune of £300m. These were a proper resettlement programme for 50,000 displaced Kurds, consultation with Syria and Iraq, archaeology rescue plans for the 2,000-year-old city of Hasankeyf and preservation of the 100,000 years of history in the region, and environmental improvements including sewage works.

After the independent World Commission on Dams report earlier this year, which set high standards for building similar projects, Skanska, the Swedish member of the consortium, pulled out.

Stephen Byers, then at the Department of Trade and Industry, dropped strong hints that the government was also to abandon the project but was overruled by No 10. Balfour Beatty is involved in a number of private finance initiatives with the government.

A report on Ilisu this July on how the four conditions were being met, said the human rights issues and consultations with downstream neighbours were still unresolved.

Mike Welton, chief executive of Balfour Beatty, yesterday said that with the issues still unsecured and no early resolution likely, it was not in the best interests of the company to continue. It believed the project could only proceed with substantial extra work and expense and it would suffer considerable further delay.

Kerim Yildiz, spokesman for the Kurdish Human Rights Project, said: "We are delighted. We were not expecting this, because Balfour Beatty was fighting hard for the dam.

"This Ilisu campaign is a great example of environment and human rights groups fighting together to be effective."

Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "This is a tremendous win against a disastrous project. The story of the Ilisu dam shows the need for laws which require British firms to adopt clear ethical and environmental standards in their work abroad as well as at home."

The Department of Trade and Industry and the export credit guarantee department were saying little yesterday. The official line was that the "decision is a commercial matter for the company". But it was clear there will be relief that such a potential political disaster has gone. The government faced a judicial review over human rights and breaches of international law if it had gone ahead.

Though this means the scheme is now effectively dead, the Turkish government has always said it would continue with the project whether or not it got the foreign backing. It intends to issue a statement.