MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Filmus too thinks US-Cuba case a mirror for Falklands feud

Secretary of Malvinas (Falklands) Daniel Filmus confident international support will make a difference.

Argentine Secretary of Malvinas echoes President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claims overwhelming majority of nations support his country. 'Policy of isolating UK succeeding,' he says.

 Argentina's Secretary of Malvinas (Falklands) Daniel Filmus said Friday that just like it happened between the United States and Cuba, “there is a community of nations demanding that there be dialogue” with the UK over the Malvinas (Falklands) issue. “If Cuba's struggle has succeeded and so says [US President Barack] Obama in his speech, it's because all of Latin America stood by its side and the same happens with Argentina and the United Kingdom,” said the official in an interview on the state-run Radio Nacional. He also praised the support received from the G77 + China bloc.

“At the last United Nations General Assembly, when the Cuba blockade was discussed, the United States got 2 votes, theirs and that of Israel, against 189 from the “overwhelming majority of the nations in the world which demanded that it'd be brought to an end,” Filmus said.

Filmus expressed that something similar happened 50 years ago “when they took a vote on which was the solution to the Malvinas question and there was none against starting talks between Argentina and the United Kingdom.“ According to the official, ”our strategy of isolating the United Kingdom is succeeding.“

The Malvinas question, ”unlike other cases, is one of colonisation and of territorial usurpation,“ he claimed, because ”a part of the country was occupied militarily in 1833, when the United Kingdom disembarked men on islands which already belonged to our country.“

Filmus then quoted Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's speech before the United Nations' Decolonisation Committee: ”We don't ask to be told that we're right; we ask that talks begin, we are convinced that through dialogue, peace and diplomacy we shall reach an accord.“ Filmus also made it clear that ”to us, the islanders live in a part of Argentina.“ He also spoke against ”those who think they can dominate others because they have the power of the arms and the financial [resources] to do it.

Regarding Prime Minister David Cameron's announcement that a statue in honour of Baroness Margaret Thatcher will be unveiled on the islands, Filmus said Britain wants “to recreate a conflict which in our view should be resolved through peace, dialogue and democracy, just like Argentina has been claiming from 1983 onwards.” He also said the United Kingdom “doesn't want the independence of the islanders; what it wants is oil, access to Antarctica and the bioceanic corridor; hence, they have the biggest military base there is south of parallel 50.”

Filmus also explained that “there's a huge environmental danger, if you are to exploit hydrocarbon in the area without support from the mainland; we saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with British Petroleum.” He also pointed out that “it was British Petroleum who decided to stay on mainland Argentina and not on the Malvinas, because Argentine law forbids it to be done on both sides” and warned that “the few companies that chose to remain [on the islands] will be sanctioned to the fullest extent of the law.”