MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina’s Malvinas policy leads no where; China and Taiwan, an inspiring example

Political science and diplomacy PhD Perez Llana believes Islanders can’t be ignored in negotiations

Argentina has fallen prisoner of two conflicting positions on the Malvinas Islands issue which lead no where in the objective of claiming sovereignty over the South Atlantic Islands, says Carlos Perez Llana a former Argentine ambassador in Paris and political science and diplomacy professor.

Likewise Argentina must become a respectable and reliable member of the international community, abide by the rule of the law, manage a sustained growth and become attractive for global business through serious political alliances. “A good inspiration for Argentina should be China and its seduction policy with Taiwan”

“On the one side you have the nationalist position which says Malvinas are Argentine and therefore ignore the Islanders who are British, keep intensifying diplomatic and eventually economic pressures and in two or three years at the most you will obtain positive results”, points out Perez Llana.

The other position says forget the Malvinas, a war has been lost and if there is no willingness from the Islanders “it’s going to be impossible to recover the Islands”.

However Perez Llana believes things are not that simple and pushing and shoving won’t obtain nothing and likewise forgetting the Malvinas “would mean giving up negotiations on fisheries, oil and the projection on Antarctica”.

The former ambassador and professor at several reputed universities argues that yes, the Malvinas are Argentine, and “we must hold negotiations which does not necessarily mean talking only to London and ignoring the Islanders, nor is the case to push and push with no results”.

Perez Llana says that after having lost a war “Argentina has limited conditions to negotiate and must begin admitting that it is possible we will not achieve all we want and it’s going to take a long time before an agreement is reached”.

Likewise the advance of negotiations will much depend on “serious and numerous alliances in the world, a significant sustained economic growth and becoming attractive to the international economy as well as great respect for the rule of law and institutions which makes a country trustworthy and reliable”.

Perez Llana then appealed to the Chinese example. “Look at Beijing with all the power it has, it’s not proposing an invasion of Taiwan, on the contrary it tries to attract and seduce the island state and has increased bilateral relations, that is what should be inspiring us”.

Finally believing that multiplying claims and collecting support from certain countries is going to change the position of Great Britain, no matter how serious the economic and political problems of Prime Minister David Cameron, does not imply any yielding, rather the contrary. “The rest is wishful thinking”.