MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

G24 Calls for Sovereignty Negotiations.

With just a couple of days before the first anniversary of the Argentine-British July 14th. Statement, Argentina's Foreign Secretary Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini addressing the United Nations Decolonisation Committee in New York clearly outlined the new administration's policy towards the Falkland Islands and officially buried Guido Di Tella's Islanders seduction policy.

As has been the tradition, after listening to Mr. Rodríguez Giavarini and petitioners Falklands Councillors Sharon Halford and Richard Cockwell, the Group of 24, G24, by consensus backed the Argentine position and requested the United Kingdom and Argentina "to ensure the current dialogue and cooperation process by resuming negotiations", and finding in the shortest time possible "a peaceful solution to the sovereignty controversy".

In his speech Mr. Rodríguez Giavarini insisted in Argentina's permanent and indeclinable commitment to the peaceful recovery of the South Atlantic Islands and maritime spaces, and stressed his government's willingness to begin immediate sovereignty negotiations with the United Kingdom. "We want to solve the conflict that has an incidence in our relations with the United Kingdom", said the Argentine Foreign Secretary adding that is spite of great progress in bilateral understanding, "there are negative developments" in our relations.

Rodríguez Giavarini said that turning backs to a solution to the sovereignty controversy "attempts against the possibilities of a more harmonic future for all of us". The Argentine official also reviewed the agreements in different fields achieved with the previous government and described them as of provisional nature, saying no progress has been recorded in the sovereignty issue. Nevertheless insisted in the favourable framework for a "bilateral treatment" of the dispute, given current relations with Britain.

Councillors Halford and Cockwell in their speeches demanded self determination for the people of the Falkland Islands, a right enshrined in the UN charter, besides the fact that the Islands are self financing and self governing in all aspects but foreign and defence policy. "We the people of the Falkland Islands are fully entitled to be recognised as a people in our own right, we are and always have been culturally, linguistically and historically different from the Latin American states", emphasised Councillor Halford, adding that "this is the same right to self determination that in other countries where Argentine troops under United Nations banner, help to protect".

Halford pointed out that whilst the Islands are prepared to p