MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Diplomatic rift between Argentina and Uruguay

Argentine officials complained bitterly to Uruguay over the posting in Argentina of a military attaché who is accused of human rights abuses during the country's eleven years military dictatorship.

In a strongly worded statement released Thursday, Argentina expressed its "profound disgust" at the appointment to the Uruguayan embassy in Buenos Aires of Captain Juan Craigdallie as Assistant Naval Attaché.

Argentina's Foreign Ministry said that President Néstor Kirchner hoped that his Uruguayan counterpart, Jorge Batlle, would withdraw the name.

The strong Argentine reaction followed the revelation by a Uruguayan daily of Captain Craigdallie's appointment, an officer that local human rights organizations claim was a notorious repressor of suspected dissidents during the military regime that extended from 1973 to 1985.

Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa urgently summoned Thursday Uruguayan Ambassador Alberto Volonté to protest Craigdallie's posting and the Argentine Ambassador in Montevideo Jorge Patiño Meyer began lobbying for the cancelling of the appointment.

Since president Kirchner took office last May relations with Uruguayan president Jorge Batlle have not been smooth. Mr. Kirchner has a strong independent populist stand regarding relations with Washington, while the Uruguayan president is inclined to closer trade and political links with the Bush administration somehow questioning the Brazilian-Argentine sponsored project of a fully integrated South America following on the steps of the Mercosur experience.

Argentina and Uruguay endured during most of the seventies and until the early eighties, repressive, right-wing military regimes. In Argentine the military were particularly bloody having kidnapped, tortured and killed between 9,000 and 30,000 people.