MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Praise for Argentine Admiral
The death of the former Commander of the Argentine Navy, Admiral Carlos Marron, has been marked by praise in the British Press for his initiatives to normalise relations with the Royal Navy following the 1982 Falklands (Malvinas) War.
An obituary in the London Times newspaper says that he took important steps to restore relations during his tenure as Argentine Navy Commander from 1996 to 1999.
He invited the then First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce (later Chief of Defence Staff), to visit Argentina in 1999 and that same year became the first Argentine Naval Commander to visit Britain since the 1982 Conflict. This exchange of visits led to the first joint sea and rescue operations between the two navies in the South Atlantic.
Admiral Marron, who died last month, aged 64, graduated from the Argentine Naval College in 1960 and commanded the main ships of the Argentine fleet including the sail training ship Libertad and the cruiser General Belgrano, later sunk in the Falklands War
While head of the Navy under President Carlos Menem, he took the controversial decision to mothball the ageing aircraft carrier 25 de Mayo which took part in the Falklands War and was of great sentimental importance to naval pilots.
As well as initiating the naval rapprochement with the United Kingdom, Admiral Marron was responsible for the first joint exercises with neighbouring Chile, a country with which Argentina nearly went to war in the late 1970s in their territorial dispute over the Beagle Channel Islands.
He retired from the Navy in 1999.
Harold Briley, (MP) London
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