MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Next of kin suspend Memorial visit “till further notice”.

A spokesman for the Families Commission confirmed Tuesday night in Buenos Aires that a visit to the Argentine Cemetery at Darwin scheduled for later this week had been “suspended till further notice”.

In response to an enquiry made by MercoPress the spokesman said that the next-of-kin had felt that traveling to the Islands on this one-off private flight to conduct a brief ceremony to mark the completion work of the monument at the Argentine Cemetery at Darwin "could be politically misconstrued" as it was not covered by any existing Argentine-British agreements.

The spokesman added that a new date had not yet been decided and that they would continue upholding a policy of not getting involved in anything which could be then used for ulterior political reasons.

On July 15th it was announced that the Argentine Families Commission had sought the agreement of the Falkland Islands Government for a day visit by a small group from the Families Commission to the Argentine Memorial at Darwin on Friday 6 August, "to enable them to conduct a short ceremony to mark the completion of construction work".

At the time Falkland Island Councilors had given their agreement to the visit which would be of no more than twelve in number and would not include any Argentine politicians or officials.

The visitors were to travel to the Islands in a private aircraft under the terms of the Argentine-British understanding on private flights signed in February 2001.

Finally, the Families Commission said it is still their intention to carry out this visit at a later date "when the conditions allow us to do so" and that their intention of "expressing their gratitude to all those who have contributed to the successful completion of this project" was unaffected by the suspension of Friday's flight.