MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Academic's dismay at reported Argentine funding cut Oxford Argentine Studies Centre under threat.

An Argentine academic has reacted with disappointment, dismay and anger to a Buenos Aires Press report that the Argentine Government has decided to cut off the 300 thousand dollars (200 thousand pounds) a year promised for ten years by the previous Government to support the new Argentine Studies Centre at St Anthony's College, Oxford.

The Director of the Argentine Studies Centre, Dr Celia Szusterman, complained that she first heard about the reported withdrawal of funds from a story in the Clarin newspaper and was not immediately able to contact anyone either at the Argentine Embassy in London or the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires to seek clarification.

She dismissed suggestions that it was for economic reasons, saying that the 300-thousand dollars was a comparatively small sum in the Argentine Government budget. She had received only one year's funding of 300-thousand dollars since setting up the Centre in 1999.

Three-million dollars (two-million pounds) over ten years had been pledged by President Menem's Government after his 1998 visit to the United Kingdom -- the first by an Argentine since before the 1982 Falklands invasion. He and his retinue of Ministers and advisers signed a series of co-operation agreements in London covering not just education but trade, investment, defence,sport, transport, law and even space.

The Argentine Studies at Oxford was an initiative sponsored by President Menem's Foreign Minister, Dr Guido Di Tella, who has had a long association with Saint Anthony's College as a visiting academic, both before and since his spell as Foreign Minister. He had been Doctor Szusterman's mentor when she took her degree at Oxford.

Dispute Aired on BBC Radio

Dr Szusterman made known her displeasure over the reported cut in funding in an interview on BBC Radio Oxford and said she hopes to raise funds to keep running the Studies Centre. She dismissed as "misinformation and misunderstanding" suggestions that she has used the Argentine Studies Centre to promote Argentina's sovereignty claim to the Falkland Islands. She said the Study Centre was an academic attempt to educate people about Argentina, on such issues as historic Anglo-Argentine relations, education, justice, the cinema and literature, and not so much the Falklands Sovereignty issue.

The Falklands became an obsession with Dr Di Tella while he was Foreign Minister, conducting what became known as his "charm offensive" to encourage co-operation by the Islanders.

Journalist Harold Briley, interviewed on the same programme on BBC Radi