MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK supports Ambassador Castro during the opening of a ‘Malvinas patio’ in government house

Castro admits to have been after Hague since London’s Lord Mayor Easter dinner

President Cristina Fernández defended Argentine Ambassador to the UK Alicia Castro, who tackled British Foreign Minister William Hague over Falklands/Malvinas Islands dialogue and stressed the fact that “the right to talk cannot be invalidated.”

“We will not lower our voices or stay silent in any part of the world. Only the force of word, of reason and justice can face the strength of war and weapons,” she added.

As she inaugurated on Wednesday the Malvinas Islands patio in the Government House, the President said the Foreign Secretary should not be surprised by Castro’s questioning and added that the British refusal to dialogue over the Islands’ sovereignty “is becoming untenable.”

“I found it reasonable that the British Foreign Minister was bothered by Castro’s questions, but I do not understand why some Argentines were bothered as well, as I read today in the news. Decorum has been lost,” she added.

From London Ambassador Castro told reporters she felt no regrets for having surprised UK’s Foreign Secretary Hague with questions over the “Malvinas Islands sovereignty” during a public meeting last Monday in London.

“I did not interrupt the Foreign Secretary. I was invited to the meeting as Argentina’s ambassador to the United Kingdom,” she explained.

Likewise, Castro indicated that “I have been ambassador for many years now, plus I was national deputy for eight years, so I perfectly know when I can talk or not. In this case, it was the very same Hague, who authorized me to talk”

Castro referred to some local media who bashed her behaviour in front of Hague, “They are trying to make me look like a cartoon, or as if I was someone who set a protest rally in front of the Foreign Secretary”.

However the Argentine ambassador speaking with The Independent said that she had been forced to act as she did on Monday “after failing in her attempt to meet Foreign Secretary Hague over the Malvinas”.

She told The Independent: “I spoke to him at the Lord’s [Lord Mayor’s] Easter dinner. I pointed out that we must speak, we need to engage in 21st-century diplomacy and not the colonial diplomacy of the 19th-century. We have heard nothing from his people at all”.

“I have had a good meeting with [Foreign Office minister] Jeremy Browne about flights between Argentina and the Falklands and fishery conservation. He is a very nice man. And we must continue in the same way – if only Mr Hague will hold a proper dialogue”.

The ambassador stressed that “we do not want to take away the Britishness of the people in the (Falklands) Malvinas, they are proud to be British and we respect that. But why keep a thousand soldiers, aircraft and boats there? For an invasion that will never happen. It was a cruel, stupid war carried out by our cruel military junta which was killing its own people while killing British soldiers in the Malvinas. Do you think we approve of that?”

The Independent says Ms Castro feels that it is time to stop talking about the war. “We don’t want PM David Cameron reminding us constantly that we lost the war, we know that. He doesn’t keep saying to Angela Merkel that Germany lost the war, does he? We know why, because Britain needs German help to cope with the recession”.

Ms Castro, 62, became the first Argentine ambassador to the UK for three years after moving here from Venezuela. The former stewardess with Aerolineas Argentinas and fiery union official is a confidante of President Cristina Fernandez and became very close to Hugo Chavez in Caracas.

After her appointment to London an Argentine website ran a picture of her with the Venezuelan leader genuflecting and kissing an imperious looking Ms Castro’s hand with the caption “Will Prince Charles be her next conquest?”

The Independent described Ms Castro, in a blue suit holding a blue handbag as having “a demeanor resembling a certain former British prime minister”.