MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine President insists on his country's rights regarding Malvinas issue before the UN

Fernández denounced colonialism on the part of the United Kingdom

Argentine President Alberto Fernández spoke before the United Nations' 76th General Assembly Fernández about his country's “legitimate and imprescriptible sovereignty rights, over the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime spaces that make up part of the Argentine national territory.”

In his recorded message, Fernández also pointed out that “these territories have been illegally occupied by the United Kingdom for more than 188 years. There is no reason other than the intention of the United Kingdom to maintain the manifest and illegitimate colonial situation so that bilateral dialogue is not resumed right now on the Malvinas issue.”

Fernández also mentioned a “toxic and irresponsible” foreign debt bequeathed to his administration from that of former President Mauricio Macri, a situation which he dubbed as “decide.”

Fernández was speaking to the world but sending a message to the local constituency with the Nov. 14 mid-term elections in sight, after his party lost to Macri's Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) in most districts at the Sept. 12 Open, Mandatory and Simultaneous Primary (PASO) elections.

The Argentine head of state also spoke to the UN about a “reconfiguration of the global financial architecture,” not only for his country but about the situation throughout Latin America. “The risk of a generalized external debt debacle is latent in developing countries,“ Fernández said.

”Latin America and the Caribbean allocate 57 per cent of their exports to the payment of foreign debt services,“ he added.

The Argentine leader also brought up the need to establish ”a multilateral framework for the restructuring of the debt,” particularly in the case of “a country which has been subjected to a toxic and irresponsible debt with the International Monetary Fund.”

“The resources approved by the International Monetary Fund to Argentina in this unsustainable debt were 57 billion dollars, the equivalent of all that the organization disbursed in the year of the pandemic to 85 countries in the world,” Fernández went on.

“There is no technical rationale, no ethical logic, or political sensitivity that can justify such an aberration. The biggest thing is that a large part of the resources supplied to Argentina has been fled from the country due to an irresponsible opening of capital accounts,” the Argentine President further explained.

Fernández also described recent allocations from the IMF as “insufficient” and insisted on the extension of the Initiative for the Suspension of Debt Services sponsored by the G20, “because it does not fully address the issue of debt relief and restructuring of unsustainable debt.”

The Argentine leader also stressed that “vaccines against COVID-19 must be global public goods,” adding that his country “welcomes the proposal on patents, within the framework of the World Trade Organization, to contribute to promoting the production, competition and local development of vaccines.“

Fernández also insisted on “combining exponential technological change and terminal environmental degradation with a vision of human, integral development, and planetary social justice.”

“It is either solidarity or extinction,” he said regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, global inequity and climate change, all things which go “hand in hand with caring for our common home that is the planet.”

Fernández then mentioned the investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish institution in Buenos Aires. “The policy started in this area in 2003 of requiring the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to cooperate with the Argentine judicial authorities continues,” he stressed.

The Argentine President also reviewed some of his Government's achievements regarding rights for women, diversities, LGBTIQ + people and other groups, which require “a new beginning in favour of more just, inclusive and egalitarian societies.”