MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina and Falklands before C24.

Argentina will reiterate this Monday before the United Nations its request for discussions with the United Kingdom leading to a peaceful and negotiated solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands.

Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Rafael Bielsa who left Saturday evening for New York added to the delegation veteran diplomat and Falklands expert Ambassador Lucio García del Solar. Mr. Bielsa is expected to address the annual session of the Decolonization Committee or C 24 Monday mid morning.

Ambassador García del Solar acting as Ambassador before United Nations in 1965 drafted and proposed before the UN General Assembly Resolution 2065 which calls on both Argentina and United Kingdom to hold discussions for a quick solution to the sovereignty dispute.

Since then Argentina has repeatedly demanded the implementation of UN Resolution 2065 and London and Buenos Aires actually began long, exhausting discussions on the future of the Falklands that were frozen in 1982 when the armed conflict.

Ambassador García del Solar was also instrumental is the UK-Argentina diplomatic relations resumption process in 1989/90 at the start of the Carlos Menem administration. Relations had been interrupted since the 1982 conflict.

According to the Argentine press Mr. Bielsa is expected to deploy a middle ground strategy in his speech before C24, insisting in direct talks with London based on Resolution 2065 and offering the Islanders an agenda of "attractions" that should facilitate communications, travel, hospital attention and trade with the South American continent particularly in the Comodoro Rivadavia area. Argentine press interpret this as a significant change from the cold indifference attitude under former president Fernando de la Rúa that insisted in ignoring the Islanders, and the "seduction policy" of former Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Guido Di Tella, who was inclined to accept that Islanders had to be heard if any long term understanding was to be reached.

However Ambassador García del Solar who could become the strategy architect for the president Kirchner administration Falklands policy openly rejected Mr. Di Tella's seduction policy since he firmly believes in a bilateral agreement with the United Kingdom.

The Falkland Islands will be represented before the C 24 by two elected Councillors, Mike Summers and John Birmingham who are also scheduled to address the UN committee Monday morning.

In its first official reaction to the new Argentine administration under President Kirchner a former governor of Santa Cruz province in Patagonia, a former governor of the province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia, the Falklands government representative in London Sukey Cameron said that, "we hope president Kirchner will take the opportunity to initiate a new era of co-operation with the Falkland Islands, based on the recognition of our fundamental right to self-determination and our firm desire to remain British - and drop his country's sovereignty claim. Then we can live as neighbors should do".

But it seems most unlikely Mr. Bielsa will recognize the Islanders "right to self-determination" and even less that Argentina will drop its sovereignty claim, as has been the country's official policy fundamentals for decades.