MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bag of claims inflation: Falklands, Cuba plus Diego García and Mayotte

Gaddafi will be hosting the next summit

The recent second summit of South America and African leaders added to the traditional statements on the Falklands/Malvinas dispute and the US trade embargo on Cuba, similar demands referred to disputes over islands in the Indian Ocean involving Britain and France.

“We call on the United Kingdom and Argentina to resume negotiations with the purpose of finding, urgently, a fair, peaceful and definitive solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Islas Malvinas”, said the document released Sunday in the island of Margarita, Venezuela at the end of the summit.

Argentina and the UK went to war in 1982 over the sovereignty of the Falklands following its occupation by Argentine forces sent by the military dictatorship of the time. Two and a half months later the Argentines troops surrendered.

Similarly the South American and African leaders “reiterated their most energetic rejection to the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the US government on Cuba”. The statement was unanimously approved by the 66 participating countries at the South America/Africa summit.

“We demand the US complies with the 17 successive UN resolutions” regarding Cuba, said Venezuelan host president Hugo Chavez, who read the final declaration.

But this time the African lobby included a mention to other sovereignty disputes: Diego García belonging to the Chagos archipelago located in the middle of the Indian Ocean and managed by Britain, and the Mayotte islands dispute between France and the Comoro Union.

Inhabitants of Diego García (officially British Indian Ocean Territory) were expelled in the sixties and the island was leased to the US to build a military base. The UK has undertaken to cede the islands to Mauritius when they are no longer required for defence purposes. Since 2000 the English High Court has ruled in favour of the original inhabitants to be returned to their homeland.

The other dispute refers to the Mayotte islands (between Madagascar and northern Mozambique) under French administration and which the Comoro Islands claims.

In this case the situation is even more complicated since according to a local referendum from March 2009, Mayotte massively approved a constitutional reform (with about 95% of voters) which means the disputed islands will become a new French Overseas Department (or DOM, département d'outre-mer), further increasing its links with the legal and social system used in DOM La Réunion (east of Madagascar) and in the metropolis.

The next South America-Africa summit is scheduled for 2011 in Libya to be hosted by Mohammad Gaddafi.

“Hopefully we’ll meet again in 2011 in the popular, socialist republic of Libya”, said Chavez at the closing ceremony on Sunday in Margarita island.

The final declaration also calls for the cooperation between the two regions in areas such as energy, finance, trade, technology and health, with advances to be assessed in two years time.