FIDELITY GETS OUT

Fidelity Investments is no longer the prime target of a campaign to halt oil
drilling in the Colombian rain forest, but two other New England-based
companies may soon take the investment giant's place.

Last year, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Project Underground, and
other environmental groups targeted Boston-based Fidelity in a campaign to
stop Occidental Petroleum Corporation from exploring for oil in an area of
Colombia claimed by the indigenous U'wa people. At the time, Fidelity was
one of Occidental's three largest stockholders, but it has since sold more
than three-quarters of its Occidental stock. Environmentalists are now
considering shifting their campaign's focus to Providence-based Textron,
Hartford-based United Technologies Corporation, and a New York investment
company, says Kim Foster, RAN's Northeast coordinator.

Fidelity owned eight percent of Occidental's stock at the end of 1999. But
by October 1, its share had dropped to just under two percent, says Fidelity
spokesman Vincent Loporchio. The sell-off "was in no way related" to the
protests that urged Fidelity to pressure Occidental to abandon its drilling
plans, Loporchio says, but he refuses to explain why Fidelity did sell. "Our
policy is, we don't comment on individual companies that we hold," he
explains.

Fidelity most likely sold its stock, Foster speculates, because it realized
that the Colombian civil war makes all investment there risky. Bernstein
Investment Research and Management in New York City is now Occidental's
largest shareholder, she says, and is a likely target for future
environmental protests.

Textron and United Technologies are also probable targets, Foster says,
because they're selling Bell and Sikorsky helicopters to Colombia as part of
President Clinton's $1.3 billion drug-war program. The helicopters will be
used to protect Occidental's extensive Colombian oil-drilling operation,
says Foster, because the aid package "is about oil. It's not about the drug
war."

In 1999, the U'wa occupied Occidental's drilling site, which is within a
mile of tribal lands, but they were expelled by Colombian troops. During the
evacuation, Foster says, three children were killed. The U'wa also
threatened to commit mass suicide if exploration began on the site. But when
drilling began in November, they changed their minds, tribal leaders said
during a New England tour, because they realized that their deaths would
only benefit the Colombian government. Using a recently uncovered 1661 deed
from Spain, the U'wa are challenging Occidental's ownership of the land.

American environmentalists won't ignore Fidelity completely. They hope to
persuade the company to adopt an "indigenous screen," Foster says, that
would allow investors to buy stocks in companies that have favorable
policies toward native peoples.