MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina ready to host Antarctic Secretariat.

The Argentine Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee will be considering this Wednesday the bill making Buenos Aires the permanent seat for the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat.

According to the president of the Committee Deputy Jorge Argüello the bill that already was passed by the Senate should be approved the same day. This apparently was agreed between Deputy Argüello and Foreign Affairs Secretary Rafael Bielsa when last week he informed the Committee on Argentina's foreign policy.

The bill ratifies what was approved last year in Madrid by 27 consulting parties of the 46 countries that make up the Antarctic Treaty.

Becoming the permanent seat of the Antarctic Treaty has been a permanent objective of Argentine diplomacy, consistently delayed by Britain, arguing Argentina's Antarctic effort was "excessively militarized".

It was not until July 2001 in the Saint Petersburg meeting when the consulting parties, including Britain, unanimously approved Buenos Aires as the location for the Treaty's Secretariat, following former President Fernando De la Rúa's decision to cut the number of military personnel in Argentine Antarctic bases and stations.

Last June in Madrid during the XXVI meeting, it was decided that Buenos Aires will effectively become the official seat of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat when all consulting parties have approved the decision.

Argentine diplomats are confident that the process, even when it could be slow, should be smoother than expected because of some of the consulting parties involved including United States, UK, France, Japan, South Africa, Chile and Uruguay.

In the coming consulting meeting scheduled between May 24 and June 4 in Cape Town, South Africa, the Executive Secretary of the Antarctic Treaty will be elected and "his office will be waiting for him in Buenos Aires", says Mariano Memolli, president of the Argentine Antarctic Directorate.

Argentina this year celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its Antarctic uninterrupted presence and in 1959 was one of the twelve founding countries of the Antarctic Treaty