Falkland Islands representative Roger Edwards speaking before the UN Special Decolonization Committee recalled the Islands history and highlighted that the Falklands had British sovereignty since 1765, a time when Argentina did not exist as a sovereign nation.
Argentina will be making its case claiming sovereignty over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands before the UN Special Decolonization Committee, C24, on Thursday morning. Two petitioners will support his presentation: a descendent from Luis Vernet and Falklands born Alejandro/Alexander Betts.
Foreign minister Hector Timerman is heading a multi-party delegation that on Thursday will make the presentation of Argentina's position on the Falklands/Malvinas Islands sovereignty dispute before the UN Decolonization Committee in New York.
For the first time in many years, the UN decolonization unit held several meetings with each of the four administering powers: United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and the United States, as well as various other “stakeholders”, in order to identify next steps in the decolonization process.
Spain believes negotiation with Britain is the only realistic avenue for a resolution of the claim it makes over Gibraltar and its waters and that only by a decision of the United Nations can decolonization of the Rock be settled.
Grenada foreign minister Nickolas Steele is in Buenos Aires for a two-day visit which included a meeting with his peer Hector Timerman and other top officials from the foreign ministry to discuss cooperation, economic development and trade issues.
Spain will not be involved in ‘joint actions’ with Argentina regarding sovereignty claims over Gibraltar and Malvinas, said on Friday Spanish Foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, arguing there had been ‘misinterpretations’ in the Argentine version of the bilateral ministerial meeting and which was first denied by the Moncla Palace.
Argentine Foreign minister Hector Timerman in a piece published in the pro-government Pagina 12 accused Buenos Aires daily Clarin of silencing, distorting, hiding and even lying about events in Argentina and particularly regarding the Malvinas colonial issue and in the March referendum ‘of playing to the Foreign Office strategy’.
By Mike Summers (*)
Published in The Washington Times
In 1776, a group of American patriots wrote a letter to their king informing him they were unhappy with their political status and had plans to change it. Americans know this story well. That letter, the Declaration of Independence, formed the United States' profound belief that we all have certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Sierra Leone, member of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization maintained that the rights of the Islanders, present in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands for 180 years, should be paramount to any settlement and that self determination was the guiding principle of any resolution to the question. “There is no dispute that the people are the holders of the right to self-determination”.