MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile supports Argentina's direct air link aspiration.

Chile supports Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands and it's “a legitimate strategy for Argentina to have a direct air link from its continental territory to the Islands with an Argentine flagged carrier”, revealed Jaime Jelincic, mayor of Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic Province.

In a long interview with La Prensa Austral looking back to his first eight months in office, Mr. Jelincic said he was recently in Buenos Aires when Argentina effectively denied additional charter flights to the Falklands but the "decision to deny extraordinary flights was already a fact".

"Chile supports Argentina's claim to Malvinas. For some time the operation of a third flag covering Punta Arenas-Río Gallegos-Malvinas was accepted, but it has always been a legitimate strategy for Argentina to have a direct air link from its continental territory to the Islands with an Argentine flagged carrier", emphasized Mr. Jelincic.

Further on Mr. Jelincic said that what really happened was "that charter flights which are occasional flights, had began being commercialized in such numbers making Argentina feel they had in practice become regular flights. Signals of the authorization denial had been anticipated for two months". "What is evident is that Argentina wants another regular flight to the Islands, but from its own territory".

Regarding the recent incident when Chilean Army intelligence personnel were caught red handed spying after breaking into the Argentine consulate offices in the Punta Arenas Mr. Jelincic described it "as an obsolete situation with no logic or sense. It's obvious it generated annoyance in the Argentine government".

However the decisions involving the consequences of the incident were taken "at the highest level" of the Chilean government and the Ministry of Defence has begun a review of Chilean intelligence policies "to ensure that this kind of incident does not occur again".