MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Hard left slam Kirchner & Bielsa over Malvinas oil
A group of around 100 protesters belonging to the leftwing Trotskyist Socialist Workers Movement (MST) this afternoon staged a noisy demonstration outside the Foreign Ministry building in downtown Buenos Aires protesting over Argentina's current policies vis-à-vis the disputed Malvinas-Falklands Islands.
While several hundred next-of-kin, war veterans, historians, government officials, diplomats, students, met within the Foreign Ministry's luxurious San Martin Palace for the second of the two day seminar on "Malvinas in the South American Union" - the first ever such conference organized jointly by the Foreign Ministry and NGO's working on different aspects of the Malvinas dispute - the protesters chanted slogans against both President Nestor Kirchner and Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa who they accused of "continuing handing over the Malvinas" to Britain.
While handing out leaflets with a Falklands Islands Hydrocarbons map reading "This is how they rob our oil" and showing the areas awarded to Argos Evergreen, Desire Petroleum, Talisman Energy and Global Petroleum as "production areas awarded to these companies" the demonstrators chanted slogans accusing "those who rob oil in the Malvinas are the same people who murder in Iraq."
The small MST is headed by National Deputy Patricia Walsh, daughter of writer and Montonero guerrilla leader Rodolfo Walsh and has recently attracted maverick national Deputy Mario Cafiero, in turn one of the sons of longstanding Peronist leader Antonio Cafiero, who was once a Peronist Deputy but broke ranks to join Liliana Carrio's ARI party with whom he has now broken joining the MST as a senatorial candidate in the province of Buenos Aires. The MST is the Argentine branch of the Trotskyist International Workers Unity ? Fourth International, who describe themselves as "the world party of social revolution."
The organizers of the seminar told MercoPress that they had called on Cafiero and his supporters not to disrupt today's proceedings, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that "our methodological differences" over handling the Malvinas dispute was not misconstrued as suggesting that "we do not all have the same strategic goals" that of recovering the sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands he concluded.
Nicholas Tozer - Buenos Aires
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