The US judge presiding over Argentina''''s bitter dispute with two hedge funds left the country stranded in default Friday, ordering it to hold new negotiations and calling for an end to "mistrust." Despite fighting tooth-and-nail, Buenos Aires has been unable to find a way around District Judge Thomas Griesa''''s ruling in favour of the hedge funds, which has blocked it from making payments to other creditors who agreed to take a 70 percent write-down after the country''''s 2001 economic crisis.
It missed a $539 million payment due Wednesday after 11th-hour talks failed to break the impasse with the two American hedge funds, which refuse to accept a write-down. Griesa, who has blocked Argentina from servicing its restructured debt without also repaying the hedge funds the full $1.3 billion it owes them, ordered the litigants to hold new talks.
"Let''''s go back to work," Griesa said at a hearing in New York, the first since Argentina went into default. He rejected Argentina''''s request to change the court-appointed mediator charged with marshaling the negotiations, attorney Daniel Pollack, and called for more trust.
The Argentine government has accused Griesa and Pollack of "incompetence" and called the judge an "agent" of the two hedge funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management. Argentina''''s lawyer Jonathan Blackman told the court Friday that the country "no longer has confidence in the process" of negotiations being led by Pollack.