MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Defeat of “people to people diplomacy”

“Heavy handed Foreign Ministry pressure” seems to be the response to “people to people diplomacy and the triumph of reconciliation”, points out The Buenos Aires Herald in its Thursday (August 5) editorial criticizing Argentine government's reaction to a private visit by Malvinas Families next of kin to the recently finished Argentine Memorial in Darwin

Titled "Monumentally stony-hearted" the editorial asks if the current Argentine administration South Atlantic policy is not leading to "a more nationalistic and hawkish direction?" "People-to-people reconciliation does not seem too high in the agenda of a government which thus blocks access to a Memorial to its own war dead in the place they died", argues The Buenos Aires Herald.

The full text of the editorial follows:

"On his Monday visit to the Rural Society farm show in Palermo, President Néstor Kirchner expressed his readiness to talk to anybody "with the good will to dialogue" ? what more telling expression of good will could he request than the British initiative to take relatives of the 1982 war dead to the islands to give their approval of the monument to the Argentine war dead constructed there last April? Never in human history have any invaded people ever thus paid tribute to the invader without any withdrawal or repentance of the territorial claim ? anybody familiar with the often flinty islander attitudes to Argentina over the past two decades would compare the achievement of such a gesture to squeezing blood from a stone. Yet in a week supposedly dedicated to political dialogue, how did the government respond to this triumph of reconciliation, of people-to-people diplomacy? By heavy-handed Foreign Ministry pressure making tomorrow's flight to the islands by relatives of the war dead impossible.

"The ministry explanation seems to follow a byzantine logic worthy of the minister's soccer coach brother. Because the visit was humanitarian in nature, it was not considered appropriate for any government official to go but because no official was going, then nobody should go in order not to interfere with government policy ? an argument accepted by the relatives at least overtly. Such Foreign Ministry attitudes invite all kinds of speculation as to where this government's South Atlantic policy is heading. Is its thrust basically defensive or aggressive ? is this sovereignty paranoia or is a government which sent the ice-breaker Irízar to patrol trawlers and which continually stonewalls mainland links seeking to roll up the 1990 sovereignty umbrella and change policy in a more nationalistic and hawkish direction?

"Only the Foreign Ministry knows the answers to such questions (if indeed it does) but the main concern here must remain the human. People-to-people reconciliation does not seem too high in the agenda of a government which thus blocks access to a memorial to its own war dead in the place they died. Over the past month Kirchner has already been guilty of failing to walk gently over people's graves with his irresponsibly inaccurate AMIA tape announcements ? Oscar Wilde's dictum: "Once might be an accident but twice looks like carelessness" would seem to apply if politics again prevails over the deepest human feelings".