MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas with no umbrella policy

Ambassador Cesar Mayoral

There's a close relation between the fate of the Islands claimed by Argentina and the future of the developing world. The British will only yield when Argentina's international power is greater than theirs.

By Cesar Mayoral, Argentine ambassador before United Nations.

It' highly possible that the 174 year conflict Argentina sustains with the United Kingdom over the Malvinas Islands sovereignty will not find a favorable solution in the immediate (nobody can discard unexpected events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example). We are therefore facing a conflict that will need a long term effort, perseverance and patience to reach a favorable result. No haste in wanting to reach the goal immediately is what must be done; the problem is how and through which mechanisms we can obtain the goal. We could say that Malvinas is a "cursed" cause for both actors: for Argentina because it's unable to achieve sovereignty, and for the UK which must sustain diplomatic and trade relations with a country of the importance of Argentina with a conflict of magnitude in the middle, and for which it must bear, year after year, the humiliating decision of being called to negotiate sovereignty by the United Nations and must explain that its "colonialism" is not "colonialism" and that there are 2.500 British subjects descendents of those who usurped the Islands and reside 10.000 kilometers away and want to continue being Britishâ€Ã‚¦Pure, hard Colonialism. Malvinas "bothers them" and "bother", and are a "nuisance" for certain domestic Argentine groups which create preconditions, establish agendas and promote alliances. They (Islands) have the capacity of not being forgotten by those who have the responsibility of conducting Argentina's destinies. Neither can (although at a lesser level of intensity and importance) the Foreign Office which does NOT want the current "status quo", even when it carefully conceals such a position and sends fire crackers such as the probable "self determination" or the creation of a "mini State", literary inventions without any diplomatic foundations which unfortunately, some believe, forgetting that the British government spends 150 million US dollars annually in the defense budget of the Islands and that its monarchy and ruling class have never taken seriously the interests of the Islands inhabitants, which have always been used in the interests of the metropolis (remember that before the war they were willing to hand them over in a neat, closed package). Personal and professional experience has shown us that the only allies in this conflict with the United Kingdom are the developing countries, the "77", the "non aligned", and China, whose diplomatic political importance is ever growing. It's good to be well aware of it when alliances are established. No developed country (except Spain) defends and supports our demand in international forums. That is to say that the international belonging and position of Argentina has been clearly linked by this issue to Latinamerica in first place, since it's the Latinamerican countries that present and support annually the UN Decolonization Committee resolution, the only multilateral forum where Argentina has greater negotiation capacity that Great Britain, (which according to what Clarin has been publishing some seem to forget), and in second place the developing countries. That is to say there's a close link between the destiny of the Malvinas and the future of the developing world, whether some like it or not, particularly those who do not commune with these types of alliances and would prefer to deliver Malvinas under the simulation of a long claim abstention period, to please the (world's) powerful. But things have changed a lot: the "exiled Europeans" which we Argentines use to be, as Borges describes us, after the Malvinas war has transmuted us, and our dead, in native Argentines. To make things worse, the seduction policy with Great Britain (to flatter United States) only managed one night at Buckingham Palace. The main and most important teaching from the Malvinas conflict for the Argentine people is to have learnt, through pain and the humiliating defeat (first militarily and then economic-financial) that we did not belong to the "first world". And that the British will only yield when our international power is greater than theirs. To achieve this we must continue in a tenacious, persevering and patient way, through diplomatic negotiations (mainly in the multilateral field of United Nations) patiently heeding the insane attitude of the military dictatorship and honoring, with no shame at all, our fallen in battle and the former combatants.