Americas Summit expected to release support-statement for Argentina’s Falklands claim
Thirty years after the Falklands/Malvinas war, Latin America seems to be closing ranks behind Argentina's sovereignty claim over the disputed islands and reviving a bid for control in the resource-rich South Atlantic.
All countries of the region back Buenos Aires in its bitter dispute with London over the remote South Atlantic archipelago and oppose any British military presence in the region, Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin said in late March.
A statement on the issue is expected to be issued this month at the VI Summit of the Americas (April 14/15), hosted by Colombia in the city of Cartagena and to which most leaders, if not all, have confirmed their attendance including President Barack Obama.
Argentina lost the war in 1982 but on this sensitive issue, London is facing a united Latin American front, led by Brazil, the region's dominant power that has become the world's sixth largest economy, displacing the UK.
Besides Brazil is en route to become a world leading producer and exporter of oil from its massive offshore reserves and is most alert to whatever happens in the South Atlantic which it considers its area of influence.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota made this position abundantly clear in a meeting with his British counterpart William Hague in Brasilia early this year.
He told Hague that Brazil and the region “back Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands and the UN resolutions calling for dialogue between the Argentine and British governments on this issue.”
Also early this year, Patriota said Brazil was working with Uruguay to convene a meeting of the proposed South Atlantic Zone of Peace and Cooperation, bringing together South American and southern African countries.
“Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have an interest in creating a South Atlantic security zone. This has been on the agenda for decades,” said Tullo Vigevani, a professor at Sao Paulo State University.
Alberto Pfeifer of the Analysis of International Relations think-tank at Sao Paulo University noted the South Atlantic was “extremely important” for countries on both sides of the ocean.
“The geology of this region is a mirror. What you have on the South American side, you will find on the southern African side. Already large oil reserves have been discovered on the African coast, in addition to the resources of the ocean, like fishing,” he added.
Brazil is also beefing up its naval might in the South Atlantic, including with an ambitious submarine program, to protect its huge “sub-salt” oil reserves.
The oil fields, located off Brazil's southeast Atlantic coast beneath kilometers of ocean and bedrock, could contain more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil, according to official estimates.
It is no secret that Brazil believes the South Atlantic is the “blue Amazon” and no country from the northern hemisphere should be occupying it. Since former president Lula da Silva took office in 2003 it has been clear Brazil’s growing support for Argentina in the Falklands issue, they don’t want the UK near their oil reserves.
In Brazil’s long term strategy Argentina does not pose a threat, UK yes because it is associated with NATO and the last Brazilian national defense plan considers that the South Atlantic must be a security priority for Brasilia.
Tensions between London and Buenos Aires escalated anew since 2010, when the Falklands elected government with the support from Britain authorized oil companies to explore for oil in the Islands’ waters.
Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman has accused Britain of accumulating the “biggest” military power in the South Atlantic, including nuclear arms. He used a 53-nation summit on nuclear security in South Korea last month to urge Britain to confirm it has no nuclear weapons in the South Atlantic. London dismissed the insinuations as “unfounded and baseless”.
Raul Bernal-Meza, an international relations professor at Buenos Aires University, however noted that Latin American support for Argentina was not so open and unanimous 30 years ago in the middle of the Cold War when the region was ruled by right-wing dictatorships.
Chile, then under the rule of the late Augusto Pinochet, gave covert support to Britain and the only regional country to provide true aid to Argentina was Peru, which sent weapons and Mirage jets.
Today, Latin American countries depend more on each other and are less dependent on Europe and the United States and have China as the main trade partner for the many metals, grains and oilseeds from the region. Countries in the region also seek to assert a common identity.
The Union of South American Nations, Unasur, set up in 2007 “has given more cohesion to the stance of solidarity with Argentina because it is much easier to secure agreements and consensus,” said Peruvian analyst Ernesto Velit Granda.
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Who has written it?
Surely not our resident blond, Ms. Lisa Watson.
Yawwwwwwwwn
That Brazil is the sixth leading economy is extremely misleading.
It is doing well for the same reason China is, foreign investment, ie; Europe and the USA.
Those places have simply outsourced and offshored their economies.
The transition to a global economy has been very heady for these two-penny “nations” who mostly still live in squalor and a kind of seedy, stale, unimaginative, and retrograde nationalism.
Once the smoke clears it will be obvious to all what is obvious to some now.
That the emerging markets are a bubble on a wave, the one about to burst while the other crashes.
They simply do not have what it takes to manage a world as complex as what we have today.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone does really. But South America?
Please.
It will crash and burn much sooner that you think.
If we all lived by this article we'd be delivering unto a poverty stricken corrupt hell-holes what is are prosperous mainly independent well-managed territories. That is a crime against humanity, a crime against ethics and a crime against morality.
Why do you have such low standards?
Please.
So far they are managing much better than uk.uk can not manage even his own country.3 millions unemployed,1 trillion public debt,9trillion foreign debt....uk is FINISHED,hardly uk can manage anything
The rest of your statement is just pure stipulation bordering nonsense.
Islenders: There has never been a better time to join Argentina and the south american cause.
Tron - Why would the Islanders want to join a nation that is about to implode on itself? Btw - we are British, not European!
LOL
Do us a favour. Even today the British Pound is one of the world's few safe haven currencies - and far from getting weaker, it is getting stronger and stronger. Shall we compare that to Argentina's Pisspot (or whatever it is you call that joke of a currency)? What is it now? 0.23 to the US$ ... from parity little more than a decade ago at the start of the Kirchner 'miracle'?
You see, unlike Argentina; the world knows that the UK will repay any debts .. and unlike Argentina, the UK has a proven history of always repaying its debts.
Argentina just steals.
We should remind them that Argentinas claims are based on lies and distortion, then remind them that once one country is seens to pressurise another succefully over territory, then everyone will be at it - and tere are lots of potential disputes in South America.............
1)It claims to 'decolonise' only British and American aligned territories, whilst ignoring Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian, South Korean aligned territories.
2) The decolonisation committee seems only to want to discuss recolonising aligned territories under malign kakistocracies that want lebensraum.
3) The UN seems incapable of getting any of these aligned territories off its list, even when they're self-governing.
4) Malign kakistocracies such as Argentina that have no belief in self-determination, don't abide by UN rulings, don't abide by the ICJ/ICA, seem to have not only gained membership but also detract the UN into discussing recolonisation.
5) The UN C24 releases draft resolutions that rather than abiding by the charter of the UN, undermine the UN by suggesting negotiations should occur over the head of aligned territories in order to transfer sovereignty, rather than to the peoples of the aligned territories, but to a malign kakistocracy.
In essence, the UN is clearly losing the plot in bending over backwards to fulfil the malevolent demands of these poverty-ridden corrupt nations.
We should all remember the fundamental fact that the UK fulfilled its UN obligations by negotiating with Argentina, but it was KFC's husband who unilaterally decided to end negotiations and walked out. I cannot stress this enough.
In answer to your question, 'no, they do not know what they are doing'. Captain Ban Ki-moon appears to be swigging wine from the barrel while the ship sails into the storm.
www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20FCO%2020120330030.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR
I was particularly taken with footnote 4: We assume familiarity with the facts and procedural history of the various recent disputes over the attachment of bank funds held by the Republic of Argentina...and the special place of the Republic in the history of the law and diplomacy of default....
I'm surprised anyone takes them seriously.
Colombia ?...whether supports Argentine claims at South Atlantic..and also supports British Oil drilling in its own conutry(Colombia)...
Dogs even laughing them...while shaking tails........
there really is a solution to this issue and the Islanders need to be considering it for their own well being. As that article says:
www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34740&Cr&Cr1&fb_source=message
there should now be a free vote on the issue of the FI, overseen by the UN. That would satisfy UN demands, if and when it produced a result that said 90% wish to remain with the UK or voted for independence what could anyone else say? If the FI then asked the UK to continue to provide their security what could anyone say?
If the FI were an independent nation then they could ask who they wanted to provide for their security. Belize did and the UK provided for their security. No one said anything about that.
If the UN are serious in that link above then absolutely nobody could say anything once this vote was held. not the Rg's not anyone or they would be defying the UN and would therefore have no moral or international credibility.
Its time for a fair vote on the subject and leaving it up to the Islanders to decide what to do.
The only explanation that explains the (albeit tenuous and fickle) regional backing of Argentina by its cheerleaders in South America, and their 'support' in the form of a cheap and convenient show of 'solidarity' is their mutual dislike of their perceived nemesis, the hated and powerful 'gringo'.
Can ANYArg on Mercopress name me ONE UN formal and binding resolution on the Falklands that has ignored or broken?
Can any Arg on Percopress also come on here and clearly state that any Arg President could agree to a solution to the dispute that did NOT include full Argentine Sovereignty over the Islands? Their Constutution demands it!
I wonder to what extent China have made the suggestion that their SA trading partners unite against Las Piratas. As sympathy for the Argentine claim increases it is easy to imagine how China will seek to cite it as a precedent for the fulfilment of its own designs on Taiwan.
en.mercopress.com/2011/12/26/china-and-argentina-ratify-crossed-support-for-taiwan-and-falklands-claims
They already have an agreement. The US will surely know this.
Taiwan only really showed up on Chinese maps in the relatively recent history, as did Manchuria. It was only when the ROC fled there and genocided the local inhabitants that it became technically a part of China.
The basic issue is that most Taiwanese admit they're essentially chinese people on a different island, with similar customs and some shared beliefs. Falkland islanders are in no way Argentinian and don't have any shared beliefs.
If you take away the sovereignty claims, and nationality issues, they're not very similar at all.
Because of veiled expansionism China will always want Taiwan though, bits of India and most of the Islands in the South China sea, just like Argentina wants the entire South Atlantic and Antarctic.
Everyone at the UN has been told what the situation is and they really need to heed it. there is no one bar the RG's prepared to go to war over this and therefore as we virtually invented modern day diplomacy any diplomatic pressure will be swatted away.
The situation remains the same although things will really come to the boil if and when oil starts to flow (remembering that as yet there is no firm proof one way or the other that there is commercially extractable oil in and around the FI).
Lets remember that if push came to shove and the RG's decide to attack militarily this would be a totally different war with the RG mainland hit and the UK already defending the islands with top class armed forces and equipment.
We would all be amazed if that were not the case.
No. Its just irritating.
So? Like anything South Americans say is important! Look at Twinky @1. “an informative, trustworthy article from MercoPress”, he says. In other words, the argie party line. Anybody notice that Chile doesn't seem too keen. Isn't Uruguay setting up cargo flights? Doesn't actually sound too solid.
“it supports Argentinas right to claim TFI and the Scotia Sea Antarctic archipelago”
or
“it accepts that Argentina owns TFI and the Scotia Sea Antarctic archipelago”.
Sorry, but it has zero chance of doing either.
“Britain remains staunchly committed to upholding the right of the Falkland Islanders, and of the Falkland Islanders alone, to determine their own future. That was the fundamental principle that was at stake 30 years ago: and that is the principle which we solemnly re-affirm today.” DC
If Syria has taught us anything, its that the UN is a useless organization with no power whatsoever, seeing as its members range from dictators to elected officials. How the hell is China on the human rights council? The South American leaders have the combined bargaining power of Fiji, and the decolonization committee is a joke. Where are they on Tibet's independence? The islands remain a British possession, and Argentina continues to cry.
Taiwan is hardly a stronghold of freedom, whilst under the projected sphere of influence of the USA in Asia it's been under a military dictatorship, fascist rule, authoritarian dictatorship and like South Korea, it's only really just got democracy.
Chinese communism is a bit like Peronism, insofar as people associate it with a national cause, and a part of the patriotic mentality. The issue with Taiwan is that China has always said that the Chinese don't want western style democracy because it wouldn't work for chinese, they want democracy with chinese characteristics, which would essentially be the a communist party controlled authoritarian dictatorship with a thin veil of democracy. Taiwan clearly shows Chinese can enjoy democracy, and this sort of ruins the messaging of the Communists.
You're not wrong about the UN being powerless. Even worse, it's ambiguous. It creates messages about self-determination being the most important thing, and then it lets badly ruled hell-holes like Argentina kick this principle into the long grass.
As ever though, many Argentine propagandists equate a support for the principle of Argentine rule as a support for everything else Argentina does and says on the matter .. and nothing could be further from the truth.
There is no dispute. Just hysteria by CFK and her cronie to distract ordinary Argentinians away from the disasterous economic and political policies of the regime.
The only sensible answer is regime change.
Argentina doesn't even honour treaties that it signed 10 years ago, so do you seriously think that the stupid dipshits will even admit the existence of a treaty they signed 122 years ago?
Why not watch some propaganda aimed at kids on this issue!
@47 The 1850 Treaty of Friendship was stolen? Was it stolen by the cartoon characters in Pollo's children's propaganda?
During another conversation over dinner with three intelligent Argentines the state of their economy became the topic of discussion. They were more concerned with the raging inflation and as one put it, “This city looks OK on the surface but most people here are really struggling financially”. As the conversation progressed they were astonished that I knew so much about their economy, the causes of the last crash and the current difficulties CFKC has created. One enquired how I knew so much about the default. I explained that there have been many books written about it because it was the largest default by any country in history. They had no idea that they were the trophy holders. During the discussion it became apparent that the last crisis to them was a very personal tragedy and something they tried hard to put behind them.
It is when you sit breaking bread with very entertaining, warm and engaging Argentines that you fully appreciate the human consequences of that mad woman, obsessed with power and her own personal wealth, wrecking a country.
You should not call us as indoctrinated...............
at least we know the meaning of “” Doctrine of Lapse “”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_lapse
Be grateful for your humanity.
but she is rolist ..talking about Buenos Aires/Argentina never see before.....
Interestingly, Argentines that have spent time away from the country are far more aware and have open minds. They find it harder to fit back into the Argentine way of thinking - that the world revolves around them and God loves them the best - because they have seen another perspective. They are often embarrassed by the war and the mawkish obsession of CFKC.
Yup, I do feel pity for the brainwashed. It is like talking to someone that believes in conspiracy theories; they seem perfectly normal until they start rambling about stolen documents and mythical islands and being abducted by aliens. : )
The world is moving on.
Where is the very famous “” Gardolla Tavern “” in Buenos Aires..?
“” Gardolla“” is the nickname of it !
...not known at Cervantes Institute teaching.........
If you look at Asian americans for example, they typically refer to the 'bamboo ceiling' which is a hypothetical construct similar to a glass ceiling and something they believe is imposed on them and limits their career progression.
The reality is that they refuse to participate in the core cultural organism and instead choose to be a part of some non-existant socio-national group that is based around their own ethnicity. They create the bamboo ceiling by not becoming a part of the core society, and instead turn to victimisation.
Argentinians do the same thing, turn to victimization, based on a shared delusion. They then create huge numbers of 'objects' that they rely on for blame, for example 'the evil empire'. They're basically going nowhere fast.
You may cry and you may get all of South America to supports you,
Perhaps would wet your bloody pants if the Americans and Russian and even china sided with you and said we back Argentina,
And guess what silly indocronoughts
the British will still rule the Falklands,
Have you no brains between your earols, or just pigeon shit,
No democracy can or will be handed over to a dictatorship with at the very bloody minimum another bloody conflict, and maximum WW3
Are you totally brain dead, it will never happen?
It would cost this world and the next to much.
You so bloody clever,,you work it out,
And think carefully .
This is your own problem to savvy of different cultures standing at the
front of different countries.......................
in UK you all have just --1-- king (or queen).....
Argentina have more than -- 30 -- millons kings.....
That's difference............Different cultures............!
one ruler, [not 12 inches]
you may well be correct,
the safest bet, is for the argentine people to replace this deluded lady,
and make friends with the islanders,
then even millions can sleep easy,
we hope ?
Utopia....
You are letting the politicians to be unemployed....!
Argentina is a kakistocracy, it's ruled by the worst people in your society, who inevitably plunder the exchequer and turn your country into a hell-hole before going into exile.
You always write automatic comments designed before not reading other comments..
In ( 66) ...I didn't talk about /defend Argentina politics....
It has one king, Maximo... the king of hotels. So where does he get his money for his new hotels?
Argentine claims go further still, thousands of miles out into the middle of the Atlantic, and south, across what are generally accepted by everybody else as international waters into the Antarctic continent to the South Pole.
The funny part is that, if you look at a map showing Argentina's ludicrous usual 'proximity' justification, they've created a giant wedge, which conveniently omits Brazil and Chile's obvious entitlement (by Argentine geometry based logic) to their slice of the Argentine pie. More than 50% of this alleged ownership of Antarctica is based on Argentina's illegal claim to the, already inhabited and settled, Falkland Islands and territories. One of the funniest things, if you study the map, is the shape of the “Mar Argentino”, actually the Atlantic, which extends the usual 200 miles from the continent's coast, but then, very conveniently, juts out a further 100 miles into the South Atlantic to capture the Falkland Islands. I can just imagine the gang of drooling megalomanic muppets who sat around a table, with no idea of scale, or much else, drawing big lines on their silly maps. I can equally imagine today, a child in Argentina looking at these maps and thinking, 'I may be poor and hungry, living in squalor, but see how big and important my country is'. The consequence of giving a gang of ill-educated macho inadequates a pen and a map.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Mapa_argentina_bicontinental.png
- *for the sake of discussion only* -
that TFI 'belong' to Argentina, then the maritime claims fall into place
.... even their claim extension across the Southern ocean, if you accept their additional claim for the Scotia Sea archpelago and their sector claim on Antarctica itself.
Imagine how the world's resources would be presently partitioned if the world of the 1950s was still coloured pink on the maps with a 200 mile EEZ accruing to the pink!
All the minerals .... all the offshore oil ... all the farmed products.
Time moves on and the new realities encompass neither the pink, nor the ambitious territorial extensions of the sky blue and white.
Keep the Falklands British -
www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-the-Falklands-British/123151384435619?sk=wall&filter=1
Over the years -
Wales?
Scotland?
Northern Ireland?
Shetlands?
Orkneys?
Scillies?
All seem to be underpinned by the proximity argument.
Historically, this also applied - in both directions at various times - to France, Ireland, the Low Countries, the Channel Isles, etc.
Proximity is just one piece on the chessboard of world affairs.
It doesn't even play off the backrow; it is more of a pawn-like gambit.
That's why CFK plays a weak game, concentrating as she does, on her pawn-proximity-gambit.
1. Keep the Falklands British -
www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-the-Falklands-British/123151384435619?sk=wall&filter=1
2. Falklands Forever British
www.facebook.com/pages/Falklands-Forever-British/183369319529?filter=2
3. We Will Never Surrender the Falklands
www.facebook.com/pages/We-will-never-surrender-the-Falklands-Islands/327781238193?filter=2
Join the growing cause to protect the Falklands from Argentine aggression!
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