MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

People of Gibraltar will not be duped by Madrid's latest distortion of 'UK/Spain secret negotiations'

Spain is clutching at straws in trying to pretend that the annual United Nations Fourth Committee consensus decision is somehow something new or that will restart the Brussels Process, the Gibraltar Government said on Wednesday.

The statement came as the Spanish media ran their own variation of the UN draft -a story this newspaper had splashed a week ago – as if it were some breakthrough secretly negotiated by UK and Spain.

And Wednesday afternoon Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo declared that the UN decision was a “first step towards re-establishing the normality the was broken in 2004.”

He made much of the reference to Gibraltarian aspirations having to be “legitimate under international law” and said that under the Tripartite Forum Gibraltar had had its “own juridical personality” equal to UK’s, a report from the Spanish government's news agency said.

Britain always discusses the text with Gibraltar before agreeing the draft that is traditionally adopted without a vote.

On Wednesday the Gibraltar government declared that the people of Rock will not be duped; and the people of Spain “will soon see that their Government’s rhetoric in print and bullying at the frontier achieves nothing.”

The Government says that the recent statements from the EU Commission demonstrate that “reality will always shine through, and an objective determination of issues favors Gibraltar.”

A spokesman said that the annual Consensus Decision between the United Kingdom and Spain is being distorted by the Spanish Government and sectors of the Spanish media.

“The text of the Consensus has been public in Gibraltar for about two weeks. It is not clear why this is being presented in Spain as something which materialized yesterday or as kind of diplomatic victory, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

This Consensus, said No 6, is nothing new and has been agreed between the United Kingdom and Spain year after year, with practically the same wording.

“This has always included a reference to the Brussels Process and no reference to the address by the Chief Minister or to what the “aspirations” of Gibraltar actually are.

The wording this year makes reference to listening “to the interests and aspirations of Gibraltar that are legitimate under international law”. In the context of the process of decolonization and removal from the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories this reference in the Consensus can only mean the principle of self-determination which is already an overriding principle of international law given the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenants and the case law of the International Court of Justice on the subject.”

Moreover, said No 6, it is worth recalling the commitment of the United Kingdom Government never to enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their freely and democratically expressed wishes.

“The UK is committed not to enter into a process of sovereignty negotiations with which Gibraltar is not content. This has been repeated time and again by the UK Government to the Government of Spain. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself made very robust statements of support for Gibraltar and for our right to choose, in his video message on National Day”.