MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Clarín stresses significance of Hoon's visit.

In a concise but significant editorial piece in this Monday's edition, Argentine daily “Clarín” stresses the importance of the recent visit to Falklands, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires of British Secretary of Defence, Geoffrey Hoon, particularly just a few weeks away from the twentieth anniversary of the South Atlantic conflict and ten years after the beginning of the British-Argentine normalization process.

In spite of the current Argentine situation "so conditioned to a dialogue with the IMF, and the full weight of the United States relation", Clarín points out that Mr. Hoon's visit is evidence of the country's close and growing links with Britain, and Argentina's international involvement, "something which must be preserved". "With an adverse economic cycle, the diplomatic and strategic components (of the opening of the Argentine economy), have now become the dynamic tools which our country must employ to face its complex overseas negotiations", adds Clarín.

Mr. Hoon anticipated that Defence exchanges will continue and be increased, says Clarín, something "which can be valued as positive given the involvement of Argentina in international peace keeping missions, like those in Cyprus and the Balkans", where Argentine troops work "shoulder to shoulder with the British military".

Clarín concludes that Argentina's participation in UN peace keeping operations "is not a "luxury" our country can afford in the midst of a serious crisis or a lavish expenditure to ax, but a real manifestation of how to defend the national interest and commit ourselves with peace and international security efforts".