Felipe Solá met with the UN Secretary General to ask him to intercede with the UK for the Malvinas

Argentinian Foreign Minister Felipe Solá met this morning the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), the Portuguese Antonio Guterres, to ask him to intercede with the government of the United Kingdom to obtain talks on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands .

The meeting which lasted about 35 minutes was held at the headquarters of the organization in New York, where this Thursday from 11 a.m. (12 in our country) a new session of the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations ( UN) for the Question of Malvinas. It was Solá’s first official activity in New York, where he arrived on Monday and was accompanied by his chief of staff, Guillermo Justo Chaves; the secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, Daniel Filmus; and the Permanent Representative of Argentina to the United Nations, Ambassador María del Carmen Squeff.

Solá, who will speak at the UN for the first time since being foreign minister, will try to gain strong support from the 29 members of that body’s Decolonization Committee on Thursday over the country’s claim to sovereignty. Argentina on the Malvinas Islands. The Argentine delegation hopes that “representatives of international organizations such as CELAC, Mercosur and the Group of 77 and others individually “, who will also comment on the issue to support his position, as Filmus said Infobae in a telephone conversation.

On February 11, the Board of Directors of the United Nations Special Committee for Decolonization (C24) unanimously ratified its “support for the resumption of negotiations between Argentina and the United Kingdom to find a peaceful solution to the sovereignty controversy over the Malvinas Islands ”, as officially reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by Solá.

This committee will again debate a resolution in which calls on Argentina and the United Kingdom to peacefully settle Argentina’s claim to the sovereignty of the islands. In general, this post has majority approval but the British did not accept it and made their own demand based on the “self-determination” available to the islanders.

In August of last year, the C24, which is the main organ of the United Nations for decolonization, had already ruled favorably on the position of our country. This board of directors is made up of representatives of Grenada (which holds the presidency), Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone (in the three vice-presidencies) and of Syria (as rapporteur).

Secretary Filmus said this time in his account on the social network Twitter that “Argentina considers unacceptable the United Kingdom’s persistence in ignoring the call for bilateral negotiations that the (UN) General Assembly had conducted more than 55 years ago through resolution 2065 and that it was reaffirmed by 9 other resolutions of this body and by 37 resolutions of the Decolonization Committee ”.

Resolution 2065 was approved at the UN on December 16, 1965 by 94 votes in favor, 14 abstentions, no votes against and 9 absent countries and recognizes that there is a sovereignty dispute between the UK and Argentina over the Malvinas.

Since its creation, the government of Alberto Fernandez made the cause of the Malvinas a priority. By August 2020, he had won significant support for his intention to negotiate again with the British. This resolution, which was adopted by consensus, was co-sponsored by all Latin American countries members of the Special Committee: Chile, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The Special Committee on Decolonization, established in 1961 as a subsidiary organ of the United Nations General Assembly, is responsible for ensuring the implementation of United Nations General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) and annually examines the 17 situations that they still await decolonization, adopting resolutions aimed at ending colonialism. Ten of these 17 situations concern the United Kingdom.

During today’s meeting with Guterres in New York, Solá also expressed the Argentinian government’s commitment to supportive multilateralism, in the critical context of the COVID 19 pandemic, and He reiterated his position in favor of liberalizing patent rights on vaccines and essential medical supplies to fight the pandemic.

Ahead of the session on Thursday 24, the Minister of Foreign Affairs renewed Argentina’s firm support for the mission of good offices entrusted by the General Assembly to the Secretary-General, the objective of which is to bring Argentina and the United Kingdom to resume sovereignty negotiations on the question of the Malvinas, in accordance with the mandate established and reiterated in numerous resolutions of this assembly and its special commission on decolonization.

Solá and Guterres also discussed the preparatory process for the Food Systems Summit and Member States Dialogues for Argentina, held last May, which brought together a large number of actors and entities from the public and private sectors and which represent a fundamental contribution of our country. to the debates of the international community on the theme “Strengthening food systems for sustainable development”, as reported by the Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through a press release.

They also discussed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in the implementation of which Argentina is fully committed in order to achieve the economic, social and environmental objectives for the coming years, and which it considers as one of the most ambitious development projects of the United Nations.

Thursday after the session at the UN at 2:30 p.m. in Argentina (one hour less in the American city) will take place a press conference by Minister Solá.