MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Members of the Malvinas Council appointed on the flag anniversary

The Council will depend directly from the presidential office, including the foreign minister and Malvinas Secretary

The Argentine government announced on Thursday some of the names that will be sitting at the National Council on Issues Relative to the Malvinas, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands, as passed unanimously by the Argentine congress last August.

The council will depend directly from the Executive Office and besides president Alberto Fernandez it will also include foreign minister Felipe Solá and Secretary Daniel Filmus.

A Lower House member and a Senator from each of the three blocks with largest congressional representation and the Tierra del Fuego governor will also sit at the council, plus International Law experts, a Malvinas veteran and three delegates from academia and the scientific community linked to the issue. All of them will have alternates.

The Tierra del Fuego governor is Gustavo Melella; Lower House members, Fernando Suarez Lastra, Aldo Adolfo Leiva and Federico Frigerio, plus Senators Jorge Taiana, Juan Carlos Romero and Pablo Daniel Blanco.

Other appointments, Frida Armas coordinator of the Commission on External Limits of the Argentine Continental Platform; Deputy Dean of Torcuato Di Tella University, Juan Tokatlian; diplomat Susana Ruiz Cerutti; law expert Marcelo Kohen; sociologist Alcira Argumendo; former Dean of Law School Monica Pinto; Malvinas Observatory member Armando Abruza; former Army chief Martin Balza; president of Malvinas former combatants Adolfo Schweighofer; Malvinas veteran Ernesto Alonso and the head of the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, Oscar Padín.

Nobel Peace Prize Adolfo Perez Esquivel will be an honorary member. Members are appointed for five years and can be re-elected.

The Council is scheduled to hold its first meeting Friday morning, following the ceremony is which the Argentine flag will be flown symbolically in several points of the country recalling the 200th anniversary of the first time the Argentina colors were raised in the Falkland Islands. After midday a first release is expected.