MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mrs. Kirchner to farewell Malvinas Families leaving for Falklands

Hector Cisneros said the ceremony at Rio Gallegos airport will be brief

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will be at Rio Gallegos airport early Saturday morning to farewell the first group of Malvinas Families that will be flying to the Falkland Islands for the official inauguration of the Memorial at the Argentine cemetery in Darwin.

According to sources from Casa Rosada (Government House) Mrs. Kirchner left Friday evening from Buenos Aires for one of her several residences in El Calafate, Santa Cruz province, where she will spend the night and early next morning join the Families at the Rio Gallegos airport. She will be accompanied at the airport by Foreign Affairs minister Jorge Taiana.

The first group (170 out of a total 375) of next of kin of Argentine combatants killed during the 1982 South Atlantic conflict with Britain will spend the night in Rio Gallegos and are scheduled to leave early morning Saturday for the forty minutes flight to MPA.

From MPA they will be driven in buses to the Argentine cemetery in Darwin for the inauguration ceremony of the Memorial and religious services, and then to spend time next to the graves of their beloved. Of the total 649 Argentine losses during the conflict, 237 are buried at Darwin.

In the afternoon the same Lan Chile flight which every Saturday links the Falklands with Punta Arenas, Chile, with once a month additional call in Rio Gallegos, will return the group of Malvinas Families.

“The ceremony with the President will be very brief, probably at 07:45 because; we want to keep to schedule and spend as much time as possible next to our beloved”, said Hector Cisneros, president of the Malvinas Families.

The first group includes a significant number of widows, mothers, children brothers of those who died in the sinking of the cruiser “General Belgrano”, “whom have been able to be out of sea where the cruiser went down, but they also need something physical, concrete, special, that is why there are flying Saturday”, said César Gonzalez Trejo linked to the Families and to Argentina’s corps of “white helmets” that depends from the Foreign Affairs ministry.

Cisneros added that all those next of kin who won’t be travelling this month “we will continue working to ensure that they can effectively travel sometime next year”.

The chief of the Argentine Foreign Affairs cabinet Ambassador Alberto D’Alotto, who was involved in the organization of the trips said that “our objective from the very beginning was to have the most number of next of kin to fly to Malvinas. Taking into account the number of Malvinas Families members who registered, we booked 375 seats in the Lan Chile regular flight to Malvinas”.

He also praised the perseverance and commitment of the Malvinas families is ensuring the trips could be done.

As to the British (Falklands) government attitude D’Alotto said the flights are “humanitarian” which helped to an “agreement and cooperation with the British authorities.

The trips are totally financed by the Argentine government, from the moment the next of kin leaves home until he returns. This includes food, lodging, insurance, fares, etc.

The second group of next of kin is scheduled to leave October 10 and will be carrying the image of Argentina’s patron saint, Our Lady of Lujan, for which a hermite is waiting at the cenotaph, the “final block” of the Memorial, which was built in Argentina and assembled in the Falklands.

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