MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Islanders Verdict on Argentine Foreign Minister after meeting at UN.

Returning from the annual United Nations Decolonisation Committee debate about the Falklands dispute, two Falkland councillors told the BBC World Service's Calling the Falklands that they had a surprisingly cordial and helpful conversation with the Argentine Foreign Minister, Rodriguez Giavarini.

The informal meeting, at the invitation of the two islanders, Councillors Richard Cockwell and John Birmingham, took place in the margins of the debate (which ended in Britain and Argentina being urged to commence negotiations about the Falklands).

Asked if the Argentine minister, who apparently avoided contact with the islanders during the 2000 debate, is someone with whom Islanders "can do business," Richard Cockwell said, "it's hard to say." But he was impressed that the minister appears to have dropped his previous policy of ignoring Islanders. .

John Birmingham said the minister had at first been cautious about talking, but was happy when he was assured that it would be an "informal chat." John Birmingham continued: "We spoke about problems with poaching and fishing generally in the south west Atlantic - [there was a] sympathetic response - and also the continental shelf issue, which is going to be quite live in the next few months and years. The designation of a country's continental shelf limit is going to have to be decided and put to the UN by the year 2007. It would be a waste of everyone's money if the Argentines and the British, with partial financing by the Falkland islands Government, did the same work." .

Richard Cockwell indicated that discussion of the Argentine action following the controversial July 1999 agreement was cautious: "It wasn't a good idea to make the first meeting confrontational," he said. "However we did mention the [Goose Green cemetery] memorial and the fact that they had put in their planning applications. He said he was quite happy, that he understood our position on that. .

"And then we brought up the toponomy, the naming of places, and they were at great pains to say that the commission has been set up and has had its first meeting to discuss it, and things are underway on that one. Something is happening on that, there is no doubt. .

So what was the judgment of the Argentine Foreign Minister by John Birmingham? "He seems a straightish kind of person, and is obviously a professional," said John Birmingham. I got the impression that he would be willing to listen to a anything that the British and possibly the Falkland Islands council would have t