MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas issue: Infinite patience policy.

Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Rafael Bielsa criticized United Kingdom's recurrent “unilateral” decisions regarding the “Malvinas issue” and called for a dialogue with “practical and innovative” steps contributing to the resumption of negotiations for a fair, peaceful and lasting solution to the South Atlantic dispute.

In a long article published Saturday April 2 in Buenos Aires daily La Nación on the official Argentine calendar "Malvinas Day", Mr. Bielsa said Argentina will continue acting with the rationality "which has characterized our actions and also with the same firmness. When convictions are strong, urgency is not the best advisor, but infinite patience is".

Mr. Bielsa begins saying that regaining Malvinas is profoundly rooted in Argentines, "whom never consented to the illegitimate occupation or our territory by the United Kingdom", and this demands actions and policies from the government which since May 25, 2003 has privileged negotiations with the United Kingdom, "acting in a rational and firm manner, without any overacting or eccentricities".

The Foreign Affairs minister recalls that the Kirchner administration has always followed the Argentine constitutional mandate which establishes "legitimate and imprescriptible sovereignty" over the Malvinas, Georgias del Sur and Sandwich del Sur islands plus corresponding adjoining maritime and insular spaces "because they are integral part of the national territory". Furthermore the "recovery of those territories and full sovereignty rule, respecting the way of life of its inhabitants, following the principle of International Law, are a permanent and unrenounceable objective of the Argentine people".

Mr. Bielsa briefly enumerates landmarks of Falklands' history beginning in 1820 with an independent Argentina's awakening interest and decisions in the Islands; the 1833 "illegal" British occupation; United Nations 1965 resolution calling on both sides to negotiate and the following process which began in London in 1966; the 1971 Joint Declaration; war and the South Atlantic conflict of 1982; Madrid's 1989 and 1990 Joint Declarations which re-established Argentine-UK relations and opened the way for the current situation, and finally 2004.

Last year there was a meeting of the Falklands de-mining task group; of the South Atlantic Fisheries Commission; a joint Argentine-British military air-naval search and rescue exercise; the second bilateral meeting on the continental platform plus "our willingness to new proposals for direct regular flights to Malvinas from Argentina" involving Argentine air lines, writes Mr. Bielsa. Finally, the culmination of the Memorial in the Darwin Argentine cemetery, "a private initiative made viable diplomatically".

However in spite of this, underlines Mr. Bielsa, UK has been adopting unilateral decisions pretending to affirm its presence, jurisdiction and developing activities in the litigation zone, including the management of fisheries; oil exploration and exploitation; minerals prospecting; maintenance of a military base; international presentation of the Islands and the extension to the disputed area of international conventions.

These unilateral actions are against the spirit and print "of our understandings with the British side". They violate the UN resolution which calls on both parts not to adopt unilateral modifications while "the Islands are in the process of decolonization". For this reason "we have protested these actions, rejected them strongly before the United Kingdom and denounced them in United Nations". "This is all that a country respectful of international law and the multilateral order can do". "Nevertheless the bilateral Argentine-British relation evolves in its own and proper framework, characterized by its bilateral and multilateral links".

Mr. Bielsa ends anticipating that in the Malvinas issue, Argentina will continue to act with the rationality which has characterized its actions and with the same firmness. When convictions are strong, infinite patience is the best advisor.