36 signature of this Agreement may not be interpreted either as a re-opening of the friendly settlement process, which was closed before the IACHR.” (d) Finally, as complementary information, the State reports that “the territory of Fiscal Lots 55 and 14 has the necessary protection granted by the Law on Territorial Organization of Native Forests of the Province of Salta (Law 7543) and its Regulatory Decree, under Conservation Categories I and II (Red and Yellow).” 117. The Provincial State provided, together with its report, a set of Minutes of Meetings, some of them notarized and others handwritten, which record the development of several meetings held between the representatives of the Government, of the indigenous communities of the Fiscal Lots, of the Lhaka Honhat Association and of the creole families, as well as their advisors, between April 2009 and September 2010. In sum, these records demonstrate that the representatives of the Lhaka Honhat Association took an active part in the meetings and in the process, encouraging all of the parties to reach a common solution and constantly reiterating their claim to a single property title to the lands. They also prove that several indigenous communities of the area, also participating in the process, do not form part of the Lhaka Honhat Association, and expressly claim a separate property title. 118. On April 27, 2011, Commissioner Luz Patricia Mejía presided over a working meeting in Buenos Aires on this case, in the course of her visit to Argentina. The petitioners were timely invited to 113 this meeting, but they declined to attend . 119. Despite the absence of the petitioners, the working meeting was held with the presence of State representatives from the national and provincial levels. In the course of the meeting, the State described the different advances and explained in detail its report of May 3, 2011. 120. On June 8, 2011, the IACHR transmitted the report presented by the Provincial Government of Salta on May 3, 2011, to the petitioners. The petitioners response to said report, received on July 13 by the IACHR, called once more for a merits report and noted “without attempting to carry out a complete examination of the data provided by the Province, for the sole purpose of proving that there are still no guarantees that indigenous rights will be respected, the Salta Government’s report mentions that ‘50% of the 462 creole families that comply with the requirements, shall be relocated in the areas that are free from indigenous occupation and claim’. That is, there are no securities that the remaining 50% of creole families will be relocated. Moreover, the information provided by the province suggests that those who do not wish to relocate will be allowed to remain in indigenous territory. In addition, the provincial government has approached the implementation of its land allocation proposal from the standpoint of the creole rights. All of the legal provisions which have been issued and applied up to the present refer to the creole families, and consolidate the notion that these families will remain in the indigenous lands. [The information submitted does not report any strategy that tends to seek fiscal lands outside of Lots 55 and 14, or alternative solutions to be offered to the creole families so that they have the option of relocating outside of indigenous territory]. Finally, and as a confirmation of the paradigm with which the Provincial State is addressing this project, the Government of the Province conditions the transfer, delimitation, demarcation and titling of the indigenous lands to the existence 113 The petitioners explained their motives in the following terms: “Insofar as the friendly settlement process is broken, from the technical-legal standpoint, there is currently no area in which a working meeting could have a purpose compatible with the procedural status of the case. // Second, during the hearing held in October 2009 at the IACHR headquarters, it was the National State itself who recognized the many damages produced by the passage of time –eleven years since the petition by then, and almost thirteen by now-, and consequently requested the IACHR, out of its own accord, to issue the merits report. (…) Eighteen months have now elapsed since then, and we are still waiting for that pronouncement. // Third, it is important to underline that over the past years, the Government of Salta has promoted diverse meetings of different nature, with indigenous communities and creole families. Some representatives of Lhaka Honhat have participated in these spaces in order to learn about the Province’s strategies, so as to foresee their effects, and especially to have an incidence upon decisions which can definitely affect their future. However, on several occasions, Lhaka Honhat expressed that its participation was not tantamount to returning to a friendly settlement process in the international case. (…) // The truth is that until such time as a decision by the inter-American human rights system has been adopted, the indigenous communities will have no specific guarantee that they will be granted a title that respects their form of relating to the land, that the creole families will be relocated, or that they will be consulted each time that the State or private groups attempt to implement, within indigenous territory, measures that can alter their way of life. (…)”