MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spain will not seek support on Gibraltar from the coming Ibero-American summit

García-Margallo ratifies Spain’s own path in Gibraltar negotiations with UK

Spain will not seek support from the Ibero-American summit to call on the UK to resume the bilateral dialogue on Gibraltar’s sovereignty as Argentina has done traditionally with the Falklands/Malvinas issue, according to Spanish diplomatic sources reported in the Madrid media.

The Ibero-American summit scheduled for 18/19 October in Panama is expected to approve the traditional communiqué on Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands in which country members call on the UK to resume as soon as possible negotiations to resolve the historic dispute.

According to the Madrid media Spain will, as in previous occasions support the official release as long as it keeps to past drafts, as was anticipated by Spain’s Foreign affairs and cooperation minister Jose Manuel last September in New York.

Nevertheless it will not promote Ibero-American leaders into drafting and approving a similar communiqué referred to the Spanish claim over Gibraltar, despite the fact that Madrid, as Argentina, is calling on the UK to resume bilateral negotiations regarding the Rock’s sovereignty.

The international call on the UK to retake talks with Spain on Gibraltar’s sovereignty, re-surfacing the so called Brussels Process, deactivated in 2002 when the proposal for Spanish-British co-sovereignty fell through, (Gibraltar sponsored referendum) has its ‘own course’ in the framework of the United Nations, said the same sources.

In effect at the recent opening of the UN General Assembly in New York, foreign ministers from Spain and Argentina met to talk, among other points, about their respective contentious issues with UK.

However following the meeting the Argentine foreign ministry released a communiqué saying that both countries (Spain and Argentina) had agreed to “joint efforts” in asking the UK to retake the bilateral dialogue on sovereignty over the territories of Gibraltar and Malvinas.

The Spanish foreign minister had to come out and point out that with his colleague they had agreed to continue supporting Argentina’s claims over Malvinas both at the UN and other forums such as the Iberlo-American summit, and likewise expected Argentina to continue with its traditional position in support of the Spanish positive relative to Gibraltar.

Even when Gibraltar has another historic and juridical basis, different to the Malvinas contentious issue, Garcia Margallo acknowledged that they share some similarities in the framework of the UN.

The two are non autonomous territories submitted to a decolonization process and included in the UN list of territories pending decolonization. Besides they are the only two cases in which the UN has not recognized the applicability of the peoples’ right to self determination and has called for a bilateral negotiation between the two countries involved, appealing to dialogue.

Currently Madrid and London are in a full negotiation process in preparation of specific meetings, --leaving aside the sovereignty issue--, but which can enable to address some of the problems with Gibraltar such as the obstacles for Spanish fishermen to catch in the disputed waters and the strict border controls imposed by Spain that translate into long queues and loss of time, concludes the Madrid media.