Falklands: government seeks to “embarrass” Britain with claim to sovereignty and names UN

“The day this arc is completed, Argentina will be integrated, because Falklands will certainly be part of Argentina ”, said the president Alberto Fernandez, Thursday, showing the truncated stone monument in front of the General San Martín to Yapeyú who remembers that bitter military defeat almost 39 years ago.

It was not, moreover, a casual comment. Determined to leave politics behind which qualifies as “complacent and demalvinizing” and which attributes to the management of Let’s change and while considerably reducing its contacts with the British government, the government has decided to step up its pressure in international forums on Great Britain to accept the dialogue on sovereignty over the islands. The ambitious goal medium term: achieve, in the 2022 United Nations General Assembly, a rejection of the “usurpation” of the islands and a condemnation of the United Kingdom.

“The Falklands continue to be the central issue in relations with the UK, that doesn’t mean there is no progress on a positive agenda,” he said. THE NATION Daniel Filmus, holder of the Falklands Observatory. Beyond its conciliatory tone, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which directs Felipe Solá strengthen the strategy of “remove (Britain) from the comfort zone in which (Mauricio) Macri left them”, according to a senior Argentine diplomatic source.

During his 14 months in power, the government suspended the communication of information to Great Britain on fishing, with the argument that he favored the “illegal” capture and “made feasible” in fact permits from Great Britain to the fishing boats of Spain, Taiwan and South Korea in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Last year, Argentine diplomacy added G-77 to the group of international organizations that condemned the UK for not relaunching the dialogue on sovereignty, as the UN decolonization committee did two weeks ago, and this is usually done by Celac , Mercosur, Unasur and SICA, among others, Central American countries.

At the same time, no photos of the British ambassador were taken. Mark Kent with the ministers of the national cabinet, common currency under the administration of Cambiemos. “We believe in dialogue, and during our government no minister had to ask permission to take a photo or share an activity with representatives from Great Britain, they were trained and allowed to do so,” a- he replied THE NATION one of the officials responsible for diplomacy under the Macri government.

The desire to bring Great Britain back to the negotiating table, like the meeting between the Argentine Foreign Minister Miguel Zabala Ortiz and his English counterpart Michael Stewart in Buenos Aires during the radical government Arturo Illia, Fifty-five years ago, this goes hand in hand with the idea that the Democratic administration Joe biden at the White House will have a “more neutral” look than its predecessor Donald trump about this question. Diplomatic sources suggest that the US government gave these “guarantees” informally after the recent ban by the entry of an American nuclear submarine into the South Atlantic, which conducted joint military exercises with British aircraft. “It is not credible that the United States will change its position and stop seeing Britain as its natural ally,” excluded one of the protagonists of the foreign policy of the previous government.

What does Britain say? “The United Kingdom has no doubts about its sovereignty over the islas Falkland and the surrounding maritime areas, as well as on the principle and the law of the islanders of the Falklands self-determination, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and in the first article of the two United Nations covenants on human rights, under which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development “, replied to THE NATION a spokesperson for the British Chancellery.

“This means that there can only be dialogue on sovereignty if the inhabitants of the islands Falkland so they want it. The 2013 referendum (in which 99.8% of those who voted did so to maintain their current status as a British Overseas Territory) made it clear that the inhabitants of the islands Falkland does not want to talk about sovereignty ”, rejected the source of British diplomacy, and stressed that the relationship of this country with its“ overseas territories ”rests on the“ right of the inhabitants of each territory to determine their own to come up “. It is the principle of self-determination that, curiously, the government supports in the case of Venezuela in the face of “interference” from the United States.

Beyond tensions dialogue remains open on specific issues, such as the identification of the remains of war victims, sponsored by the International Red Cross, subject in which according to Filmus “progress will be made in the coming weeks” with the agreement to continue the analysis in two collective pits, an initiative which already has the backing of relatives to move forward. The advancement of a common agenda on other issues, such as environmental policy, human rights or minority rights, seems to be conditioned by the debate on sovereignty, which the Government – a month before the new anniversary of the landing of Argentina – boasts of having once again put it “high on the agenda” of foreign policy.

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