MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argüello says Argentina/US relations are fine, “nothing to worry about”

Ever smiling ambassador Argüello and his lush imagination

The Argentine Ambassador to the US, Jorge Argüello, assured on Wednesday that despite reactions to trade barriers put up this week by the US to Argentina, there was “nothing to worry about” regarding the relationship between the countries.

However Argentine political analysts consider the current situation as one of ‘conflict’ with little chance of a reversal in the short term, particularly since President Obama in his message to Congress said Argentina “has not acted in good faith in enforcing arbitral awards in favour of US owned companies”.

“There is nothing to worry about; it is a moment that we will work through, and meanwhile strive to better the bilateral relations between the countries,” Argüello said prior to participating in a seminar on the Falklands/Malvinas Islands.

The ambassador further commented that the tension felt over the matter were “just little noises that are produced” in any relationship and said that it was “totally normal.”

On Monday, US President Barack Obama announced that he was suspending trade benefits for Argentina because of Buenos Aires failure to pay more than 300 million dollars in compensation awards in two disputes involving American investors.

In response, the Argentine Foreign office deemed the measures “incomprehensible and unilateral” in “reducing commercial benefits.”

Later in the week State Department spokesperson said that the US decision “is a serious bump in the road”, but “should not come as much of a surprise.”

But Argentine political analyst Joaquin Morales Solá argues that the sums involved in compensation payments and loss of trade benefits are minor as a percentage of the bilateral relation and therefore “the signals are clearly political”.

Likewise they are also evidence of the frustration in dealings with Argentina to the extent that the Obama administration made the announcement cutting trade benefits just a few days before the Americas summit in Colombia, April 14/15.

Morales Solá then enumerates some milestones of the stormy bilateral relation of President Obama with the administration of President Cristina Fernandez.

At the previous Americas summit in Trinidad Tobago, Washington begged to the Argentine president not to make reference to the 2005 Mar del Plata summit when then US president George Bush was offended and humiliated, an incident the White House does not forget. However Cristina Fernandez dedicated most of her speech to praise Mar del Plata summit.

President Obama then made his first incursion to South America and visited Brazil and Chile and left out Argentina. The Argentine government replied with the seizure of a US military aircraft that has arrived as part of a training program for security forces. Minister Timerman even tried to get hold of a suitcase with Pentagon secret codes.

The Obama administration then began voting against granting credits to Argentina in the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank. Two strong lobbies surfaced: the two US companies still waiting for Argentina to comply with the ruling ordering compensations and US investors in Argentine sovereign bonds defaulted in 2001 and who did not adhere to the two restructuring chances offered by the Kirchner administrations in 2005 and 2010.

Finally Argentina which spent the last decade preaching against protectionism, has turned into one of the most protectionists countries and not appealing to formal rules (which many countries breach) but to the discretional whims of a single officer, Guillermo Moreno who proceeds in this manner with total presidential support and has infuriated Mercosur, US, China and the EU trade partners.

To conclude Ambassador Argüello and former Argentine representative before the UN captured headlines a few months ago in a controversy over the Falklands in a clear display of ignorance about the Islands

Argüello publicly stated that “England knows that if it cuts the social assistance and employment support, the budget of the Falklands as it has done with other British citizens, will lead to a massive emigration of Islanders to Argentina or South America”. He added that the British government hides information on the Islands “to its own people, to the Europeans in Brussels and to the rest of the world”.

Argüello insisted that the majority of “the Falkland Islands population depends from the expenses and consumption of the military base and the British Antarctic Survey”.

Finally Argüello said that the British Crown is committed to make the English people believe that the Falkland Islanders do not depend economically from the metropolis as a way “to dissimulate the costs of artificially sustaining its strategic position in the South Atlantic”.