By Charles Newbery
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
Argentina’s government sought Friday to ease diplomatic tensions with Germany and the U.S, following comments by officials.
“Argentina is not angry” with other nations, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said in a televised press conference from Geneva, Switzerland. “What we are doing is defending the interests of Argentina,” he added. “We are debating and defending our interests.”
Timerman spoke after the United Nations Human Rights Council voted in favor of a resolution condemning the actions of financial speculators, similar to a handful of hedge funds that won a lawsuit in the U.S. against Argentina over defaulted bonds.
The lawsuit turned attention to Latin America’s third-largest economy for its failure to reach a settlement with the plaintiff creditors, among them a hedge fund of New York billionaire Paul Singer.
The creditors won the lawsuit to collect $1.5 billion on bonds left over from a $100 billion default in 2001, the biggest in world history at the time.
Argentina has restructured 92.4 percent of the bonds at 30 cents on the dollar, but the litigants and other creditors held out of the offers to pursue legal channels to get full repayment.
But Argentina has refused to pay the litigants any more than the 92.4 percent, arguing that it would trigger more lawsuits with claims of at least $120 billion, something that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said would be impossible to pay.
While Argentina has won support from the United Nations and in other international forums in its fight against the holdout creditors, or vulture funds, as the president calls them, it has not been able to get a hold on the court order.
This pushed the country to default on $539 million in bond payments in July because the court order prevents Argentina from paying its U.S.-law bonds without first paying the plaintiff creditors. The next debt payment is due Sept. 30 for $200 million.
The new default has led to a deepening of a recession in Argentina, and pushed up capital flight as people seek to protect their savings against currency devaluation and 40 percent annual inflation.
The impacts of the new default caused Fernandez de Kirchner earlier this week to call the vultures by harsher names.
“Terrorists are not only those who set off bombs but also those who destabilize economies to cause poverty, hunger and misery from the sin of speculation,” she said before the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “The vulture funds are practicing a sort of economic and financial terrorism.”
Her Cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, earlier this week said Germany had a “hostile attitude” toward the country in its efforts to restructure its debts.
Capitanich based his comments on a full-page ads in Buenos Aires newspapers quoting German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble as saying that Argentina’s policymaking is an example of “lack of strength.”
The German goverment has downplayed the tension, saying it wants to work constructively with Argentina.
Germany and the U.S., however, were among five countries that voted against the financial speculation resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Tensions with the U.S. also mounted last week after Argentina threatened to deport the highest-ranking American diplomat in Buenos Aires following his comments that the country should make efforts “to get out of default.”
Argentina has been adamant that it has paid the $539 million but that the funds cannot be distributed because of the U.S. court order.
Thomas Griesa, the U.S. federal judge hearing the debt case, has called Argentina to appear in his court Monday for a contempt hearing given its refusal to pay the plaintiff creditors the $1.5 billion owed them based on his ruling. If found in contempt, Argentina could be fined $50,000 a day until it settles with the plaintiffs.
Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires and a candidate for the presidency in 2015, attacked the government for its pugnacious actions.
“We cannot fight with the entire world,” he said late Thursday on TodosNoticias, a cable news network. “You have to know how to build teams, a government for the people, not to keep telling the same story and falling in love with words. At one point, the words will collide with reality, and that's what is happening with Argentina,” he said.
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