Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero urged this Friday to “persevere in all instances”, both in terms of “dialogue and diplomacy”, to achieve the recovery of Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, and rejected “as mistaken that determinism of thinking that you can” reach that goal.
“We must persevere in all instances, we need to continue fighting with the weapons of dialogue and diplomacy” because “that determinism of thinking that it cannot be done is wrong,” said Cafiero when leading the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Resolution 37/9 on the Question of the Malvinas Islands by the United Nations General Assembly.
“The world is in tension and we are right, that is why we continue to advance and it is as important to sensitize the international community as it is to the active forces of Argentina,” said the foreign minister, who assured that “not everything is given” about the controversy of sovereignty and mentioned the background of the recent UN decision to order Great Britain to return the Chagos archipelago to the Republic of Mauritius, in Africa.
“The United Kingdom no longer argues that war grants rights, and now they speak of self-determination and there is also the foreign service to argue that the population is implanted and there is no right to self-determination there”santiago cafiero
This decision was adopted by the UN based on a conclusion of the International Court in The Hague, which by 116 votes in favor and six against, ordered that Great Britain return to Mauritius its right of sovereignty over the Chagos archipelagowhich it has occupied since the Napoleonic era, and issued a deadline until this month of November for the end of the administration of the English government, which it defined as “illegal”.
Recover sovereignty with a ruling in favor of the UN
The Argentine foreign minister maintained that the issuance of Resolution 37/9 constitutes a circumstance that “should not be forgotten, because as soon as democracy is recovered in Argentina, certain parameters are recovered, one begins to speak of pillars of foreign policy and one of them, perhaps the oldest, is the claim for Malvinas”, for which “diplomatic work has always been silent and constant”.
“The United Kingdom no longer argues that war grants rights, and now they speak of self-determination and there is also the foreign service to argue that the population is implanted and there is no right to self-determination there,” he commented.
Cafiero explained that “the United Kingdom wanted to close the Malvinas issue and the sovereignty dispute after a war, and diplomacy prevailed there”, but “Argentina always addressed the Malvinas sovereignty claim in a peaceful manner”, and described to the resolution as “a pillar of Argentine foreign policy achieved by the Nation’s foreign service”.
Together with Resolution 2065 of the year 1965, number 37/9 is a milestone in Argentine diplomacy and State policy related to the Malvinas, since it was the first to be adopted after the end of the South Atlantic conflict in 1982, was highlighted in a statement from the Foreign Ministry. This latest resolution clearly establishes that the conflict did not change the nature of the sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime spaces, which is still pending resolution, adds the official information.
The only way to put an end to this special and particular case of decolonization continues to be negotiation between the two parties in order to find a peaceful and definitive solution to the sovereignty dispute, he indicates, a position that Cafiero reaffirmed by expressing that “this is a world that needs these testimonies: Malvinas unites us, the Malvinas are Argentine”.
“Without this historical fact of resolution 37/9, Argentina’s position would not be the one we have today, which is powerful in multilateral arenas, with our presence in all forums and a claim that is fully valid. We have decided to persist in the face of the British resistance and we are adding international support”William Carmona
Resolution 37/9 not only states that “the maintenance of colonial situations is incompatible with the ideal of universal peace of the United Nations”, but in point one it asks the governments of Argentina and Great Britain to “resume negotiations in order to find a peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute “over the islands”.
For his part, the Secretary for Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, Guillermo Carmona, stated that “without this historic fact of resolution 37/9, Argentina’s position would not be the one we have today, which is powerful in multilateral arenas, with our presence in all forums and a claim that is fully valid. We have decided to persist in the face of British resistance and we are adding international support”.
During the act, diplomas were delivered to the Argentine officials who participated in the efforts to approve the resolution in November 1982 in recognition of their important contribution to this diplomatic success, which was made possible thanks to the professional work of the Foreign Service of the Nation , and a commemorative plaque on the 40th anniversary of the resolution was unveiled.
