MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina Falklands' policy cools defence relations with UK

The growing strain between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands advanced further when the Defence Ministry announced this week the suspension, until next October, of several United Kingdom/Argentina defense and military confidence building bilateral events.

According to the Buenos Aires press Defence minister Nilda Garré said that the IXth round of cooperation conversations on defense issues between Argentina and the UK, as well as the simultaneous round of bilateral contacts at military level which are held annually alternatively in Buenos Aires and London, had been suspended.

These meetings date back to 1998 when Argentina and UK agreed to hold annual cooperation talks at Defence ministry level with the purpose of military confidence building, joint involvement in search and rescue operations in the South Atlantic plus regular exchanges of information and experiences in defense affairs.

The latest meeting was held in Buenos Aires in June 2005, and this time was scheduled in London but Minister Garré apologized for the suspension saying that the current implementation of a new structure and command hierarchy in the Armed Forces, with a Joint Chief of Staff, had delayed the agenda of events.

Furthermore the cost of such a numerous delegation travelling to Great Britain was also taken into consideration. But in spite of the British offer to hold the meeting in Buenos Aires, the proposal was turned down by Ms Garré.

The announcement follows a week full of events in line with the new aggressive stance of the President Kirchner administration that has advanced its intention of ignoring the "sovereignty umbrella" agreed 16/18 years ago when diplomatic relations between Argentina and the UK were reestablished following the 1982 conflict.

Undoing the "umbrella" supposedly will help dismantle the fisheries and oil cooperation agreements in the South Atlantic which have only "helped support the Falklands' economy robbing Argentina of its legitimate natural resources in the area".

This week also the Argentine Lower House launched an all party Parliamentary Observatory on Malvinas affairs, made up of politicians and academics, with the purpose of promoting the Argentine position in the sovereignty dispute both domestically and internationally.

The Observatory will have a fourteen member council, seven Congress members with representatives from all parties and seven academics, plus an honorary Council made up of Malvinas experts and former diplomats and officials. Deputy Jorge Arguello of the ruling Victory Front, who is chairman of the Lower House's foreign affairs committee is head of the Observatory.

Allegedly according to the inauguration quotes and Buenos Aires press reports, one of the first tasks of the Observatory will be to confirm the "non legality" of the 1995 hydrocarbons understanding for the South Atlantic, which was agreed during the president Menem years.

However almost simultaneously there was a "successful" meeting of the Argentine-British technical task group for mine clearance in the Falkland Islands. Diplomats from the Foreign Affairs Ministry Malvinas Desk and representatives from the Foreign Office met in Buenos Aires in the framework of the Ottawa convention which bans anti personnel mines and commits signatory countries, which is the case of Argentina and the UK, to their destruction.

The Falklands mines elimination timetable needs to be agreed and decided by 2009. A delegation of Argentine military officers experts in mine clearance, are scheduled to visit the Islands for a field assessment in the near future, and apparently there was an only request: no Argentine military uniforms while in the Falklands.