MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Memorial to be completed in mid-April

According to AWG Construction Company's Regional Manager, Ken McKenzie, it's likely to be a further two weeks before the permanent Argentine War Memorial on the Falklands is completed.

The Memorial, agreed under the 1999 Joint Statement which was signed by the Argentine, British and Falklands Governments, will be sited at a Cemetery at Darwin, where the bodies of 234 Argentine Servicemen, killed in 1982, are buried.

There were high hopes in Buenos Aires that an official service of consecration would take place at the newly constructed Memorial, on 2 April, which sees the 22nd anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of the Islands by Argentine Forces. Although work has progressed steadily on the project, and the deadline date for completion will be met, minor adjustments still have to be made.

Mr McKenzie told Falklands Radio, 'All the Monument pieces are now in place, the cross is also in place, all the new crosses to the grave positions (for each Serviceman) have been laid. There is still some work to do with respect to tiling the marble plaques (on the Memorial) which have to be fitted, and the plaques in front of each of the graves have to be fitted, so there is probably another two weeks work to be done, but all the heavy work is now completed'.

Mr McKenzie said that the only slight difficulty with the project had come with placing the pre-cast units, which had been manufactured in Buenos Aires, into the positions which they were designed to occupy, but this had been overcome. He added that the standard of work had pleased the Argentine architect, who has been in the Islands since work first began at the Cemetery.

However the AWG Regional Manager refused to be drawn into predicting a date when the 'inauguration ceremony' might take place. He said, 'It's something that others have to decide after the work is completed and we have to get a completion certificate to say that they (Argentine Veterans Association) are happy with the work prior to any hand-over to any organization'.

The Memorial, costing around one million US dollars, has been almost totally financed by an Argentine businessman Eduardo Eunerkian of the Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 organization.

In the Islands they were recent calls from some members of the public to halt the construction of the Memorial in retaliation for a recent incursion into the Falklands Maritime Zone by an Argentine navy ship the 'Almirante Irizar' which reportedly 'harassed' Falklands licenced foreign fishing vessels. The British Government has now made a formal protest to its Argentine counterparts in Buenos Aires over the incident. However Councillor Mike Summers said that there would be no 'tit-for-tat' response from the Falklands Government, as the construction of a permanent Memorial had been part of the 1999 Joint Statement.

Bill Brown
Mercopress
Falkland Islands