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Swedish
pension fund bans investment in Israeli company on ethical grounds |
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The biggest Swedish pension fund has barred Israeli defense
electronics company Elbit Systems from its investment portfolios on
ethical grounds, Israel Radio reported Monday.
Following the lead of Norway's state oil fund, the Första AP-Fonden
pension fund said it had banned investment in Elbit because the
Israeli company had built and is operating a surveillance system for
the much debated West Bank separation barrier.
Critics of the controversial barrier argue that it is an illegal
attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security and
that it severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby,
particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and
to access work in Israel. Proponents, however, argue that the
barrier has greatly reduced the incidence of suicide bombers coming
from the West Bank and carrying out terror attacks within Israel.
According to
the Swedish website the Swedish Wire, the pension fund said in a statement that
"the Ethical Council recommended that Elbit Systems Ltd. should be excluded from
each portfolio because it deems that the company can be linked to violations of
fundamental conventions and norms."
In its annual report, the ethical council wrote that "the Council has noted that
both the European Union and the Swedish government consider the part of the
separation barrier being built on West Bank to be illegal under international
law. This position is also supported by the advisory opinion from 2004 by the
International Court of Justice regarding the separation barrier."
Israel has so far completed 413 kilometers (256 miles) of the planned 709-kilometer
(435-mile) barrier, according to UN figures.
The Swedish fund, which only had small investments in Elbit according to its
ethics council chairwoman Annika Andersson, said that Grupo Ferrovial,
PetroChina, Thales and Yahoo had successfully addressed its concerns about
ethics violations.
Last September, Norway's state pension fund, one of the world's biggest
investors, also banned Elbit from its portfolio, prompting the Israeli Foreign
Ministry to summon Norway's ambassador in protest at the move.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159936.html |
