MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gibraltar Minister not returning before “irrelevant” C24

Chief Minister Peter Caruana

Gibraltar's Chief Minister Peter Caruana 13th appearance before the United Nations General Assembly Special Committee of 24 was his last. In a dramatic turn of events on Wednesday he robustly indicated that it was pointless to keep returning because the Committee of 24 had never acted on Gibraltar's behalf but had always chosen and continued to be silent.

Gibraltar, he said, had moved on but the committee had chosen to remain behind. In a clear message he said Gibraltar now had exactly the relationship she wanted with the United Kingdom. It was not colonial in nature since Gibraltar was no longer a colony. The committee, he affirmed, had therefore made itself "irrelevant". In words obviously directed at Spain, he accused the committee of allowing the principles applicable to a colonial peoples' decolonisation to be contaminated by the anachronistic and competing territorial sovereignty claims of neighbours. Speaking to the Gibraltar Chronicle after the session following an unusually short address, he confirmed it had been his final goodbye before this committee on decolonisation, but that he would continue to speak before the Fourth Committee in October. The Chief Minister blamed the Committee of 24 for allowing arguments to "stand above sacred principles and doctrines" which existed precisely to protect the very peoples whose rights they are mandated to uphold just because of Gibraltar's inferior diplomatic strength and horse trading power as a very small country. Caruana emphasised how Gibraltar had resorted to self-help and thus, not surprisingly, it no longer looked to the Special Committee or to the UN to "help us bring about our decolonisation". The Gibraltar government delegation has always been strong in number but on this occasion, readying for his non-appearance next June for the first time since Caruana took office in 1996 he was only accompanied by his Press Secretary Francis Cantos. The Gibraltar position, the Chief Minister said in his address before the UN, had repeatedly been set out over the 13 years he had been before the committee and he was not going to do so again. "Lest continued repetition should sound like a plaint in the face of the Special Committee's apparent disinclination to adopt a clear position in support of the rights and aspirations of the people of Gibraltar," he said. Mr Caruana told the Committee of 24 that despite the strength and persistence of the Gibraltar argument and the Rock's support for its work she appeared to have failed to recruit the Committee's support of Gibraltar's decolonisation based on the core elements of her position. The Special Committee, he insisted, needed to be clear in its mind whether its mandate and function was to promote and defend the sovereignty claim of the territorial claimant, or to promote and defend the rights and aspirations of the people of the listed territory. In reference to Spain's non-binding Resolutions of the 1960s, he insisted that whatever it may be their correct interpretation they had now ceased to be relevant in this modern age and the world had moved on. The status of Gibraltar, and its relationship with the UK for the future, he acknowledged, had been settled in a way which was entirely acceptable and agreeable to the people of Gibraltar: "a modern, non-colonial relationship" in which the Rock was no longer a colony. However Gibraltar's Leader of the Opposition Joe Bossano told the Gibraltar Chronicle that he would continue to return every June to address the Committee of 24, and would continue to attend the UN Seminars, in spite of the Chief Minister's announcement. Mr Bossano said "let me tell you something a lot of people in Gibraltar perhaps do not know. 20% of my take home-pay as a member of Parliament I spend on coming to the UN three times a year, if I am willing to do that I must think I am doing something that is important for Gibraltar." Mr Bossano reiterated that Spain had lost the argument before the Committee of 24. "When I first came here in 1992 Spain had totally won the argument because there had been a 30 year gap when the only thing that the UN had heard was Spain's argument. The importance of coming to the C24 is that the people who listen to these arguments are not the same people and you have a situation where the lobbying constantly taking place here is to win over friends to the Spanish version. The British side does very little lobbying, and in my judgment if we don't come then the record of what transpires in this place only shows one description of reality", said Bossano.