MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine press gives mixed coverage to the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of 1982 South Atlantic

While the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the South Atlantic has certainly not been forgotten by the Argentine press, the coverage by local television has ranged from decidedly lukewarm to highly critical, mainly of the motivations behind the decision to try to resolve the Malvinas dispute by force.

Monday night's main political programme Detras de las Noticiason America TV conducted by Jorge Lanata was solely on this subject and included five live interviews with protagonists of the events of twenty years back. To open the programme was Constantino Davidoff, the Argentine scrap merchant who signed the contract to salvage scrap metal from the abandoned whaling stations on South Georgia and whose presence on the islands triggered off a series of events which eventually led to war. Davidoff reviewed the events of twenty year back and stated his long held view that it had been British and Islander interests that had lobbied to convert this minor incident into a full-fledged conflict between both countries.

Davidoff reminded Lanata that the official British investigation into the events leading up to the war, the 1983 Falkland Islands Review by Lord Franks, had found no "evidence at the time, and none has come to light since, suggesting that the whole (Davidoff's South Georgia contract) was planned by the Argentine government or the Navy" as part of a plan to invade the Falkland Islands.

The Argentine scrap merchant explained that he was still pursuing legal action in court to get the British government to return or refund him for the equipment he had been forced to leave on South Georgia. He confirmed that the case was still in court and a ruling is expected shortly which if upheld - in Davidoff's view - could throw extremely serious doubts over the legal security of British companies operating overseas.

Also present on the programme were photographer Rafael Wollmann who took the now world famous photographs of Royal Marines surrendering to Argentine special forces on April 2. Wollmann, who recently returned to the islands, showed some of the photos he took in his recent visit with the same islanders he had photographed in 1982.

Journalist Horacio Verbitsky, who regularly appears on the Detras de la Noticias programme, in turn presented a new edition of his book on Argentine misinformation during the war. The renowned research journalist listed a series of events in which the then Argentine authorities had sought to misinform not so much the British i