MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Next of kin planning Memorial visit in “coming days”

Relatives from the Argentine servicemen killed in the 1982 Malvinas war are planning to travel to the Falkland Islands in the “coming days” to check the cenotaph assembled in the Darwin Cemetery which was finished April 2004 but still has to be inaugurated reported Sunday in Buenos Aires the Argentine news agency DYN.

Apparently the Committee which represents the next of kin of the Argentine servicemen fallen during the 1982 conflict, requested from the Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministry and the British Embassy in Buenos Aires a "strictly humanitarian gesture" to help "unlock the issue of the charter flights" so that the inauguration of the Argentine Memorial which has been pending for the last eight months, because of "political matters", can be fulfilled.

With this in mind in the coming days the Committee will define the flight date to the Falklands of a delegation that will make the final inspection of the Memorial which was finished last April 2004.

Since November 2003 charter flights to the Falklands, (from Chile), have been suspended by the Argentine government that is pressing for a direct air link with the Islands from Argentina with an Argentine airline. Direct communications with the Falklands have been interrupted since the 1982 conflict.

"We imperiously need that the issue of the charter flights be unlocked. We need a good will gesture, a strictly humanitarian gesture", said the Committee president Hector Cisneros, adding that diplomats from both sides "have to sit down and talk about it (charter flights) because we are hostages of things that could be solved".

Last August an attempted flight of next of kin to the Falklands to check the Memorial dedicated to the 649 Argentines who died during the South Atlantic conflict was frustrated at last moment, under strong suggestions from the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs since the delegation included then British Ambassador Sir Robin Christopher and objections to direct talks with the Falklands government.

The next of kin Committee is insisting with an official inauguration of the Memorial that includes at least one relative for each Argentine servicemen killed, which means the total delegation could total 700 people, and there's no way this can be accomplished with the current ban on charter flights.

Furthermore DYN points out that no Argentine official could travel since according to the 1999 agreement they would have their passports stamped by the Islands government and this is unacceptable for the President Nestor Kirchner administration.

Apparently the Committee has also invited British Falklands veterans and relatives of British servicemen killed in the conflict to participate in the inauguration ceremony.

The only piece missing in the Argentine Memorial is an image of the Virgen de Lujan, Argentina's patron, for which a special hermitage has been built.

The Argentine press reports that a peregrination to several locations in Argentina has been planned before she's transported to the Darwin Argentine Cemetery.