”The British government not wishing to allocate money for construction of the oil pipeline urged the World Bank and other international credit organizations not to finance the construction of the pipeline.” This is a quoting from an article published in ”525th newspaper”, Baku. It seems that in Azerbaijan they have started to understand that the so called ”century’s project” may fail. We shall remind that the project has been operated by the British petroleum. However, this company has refused to finance the project alone avoiding bearing all the responsibility. They preferred to attract other investors counting first of all on the World Bank and the European Bank of reconstruction and Development. But up to now none of the potential donors has agreed to finance the construction of the pipeline through seismically dangerous territories.
The WB management decided to postpone the discussion of the project. The reason of the refuse was the pressure made by the Ministry of environment and natural resources of Georgia. Besides, the project also contains danger for the human rights. Leaders of the ”Amnesty International” human rights organization believe that ”the agreements signed between the government of Turkey and the consortium create conditions for ignoring the rights of thousands of people living through the route and contradict to the European Convention on Human Rights”. It is known that the transit agreement obliges the government of Turkey to pay compensation to the consortium. According to the representative of the ”Amnesty International” professor Sheldon Leader, this means that Turkey will be obliged to violate the rights of its citizens if they start to contradict to the business interests. ”This is a very dangerous precedent,” the professor Leader says. The management of Amnesty International believes that ”having social obligations, the British Petroleum has no right to encourage the Turkish government to give up its liabilities on protection of human rights”. So, the British human rights protectors urge the government not to assist the project.
However, it seems that the government dopes not hear the voice of the human right protectors. Recently speaking at the session of the House of Lords the Minister of Trade, Lord Saneberry said that the Expert department of the credit service can not decide anything about providing a credit for construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. According to him, the department may give credit only in case if it is sure that the pipeline is not dangerous for the environment and the human rights. And yet there are not bases to be sure.
