Malvinas Dispute Heats Up

Cristina Kirchner asked the Unites States [Monday] for a “friendly mediation” between Argentina and the United Kingdom in the conflict over sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands. [Editor’s note: The U.K. refers to these islands as the Falkland Islands, a name that Argentina rejects.] This is the way it was presented to Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who agreed to the request at an hour-and-a-half meeting held at the Casa Rosada. The two women were all smiles as the chat began with praise for the American’s outfit, which showed off the colors of Argentina.* Their meeting was very far from the cold encounter that was anticipated due to the zigzagging relations between Washington and Buenos Aires, the most recent episode of which occurred last week when the president criticized Obama for his role in the coup in Honduras.

“We requested friendly mediation from the United States between us and the United Kingdom so that we can sit down and discuss the question of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to contemplate the interests of the islands’ inhabitants, as stated in the different resolutions adopted by the United Nations starting in 1965,” said Cristina, addressing her discussion with Hillary during a press conference with national and foreign media. Cristina called the meeting “very pleasant, very respectful” and “very warm.”

For her part, Hillary told the journalists, “And we agree. We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues … ” Minutes later, the secretary of state said that her country cannot “make” either one negotiate but equally called the dialogue “the right way to proceed” on these issues.

Hillary, who met Cristina at a private meeting held in Washington while both were senators in 2003, had already anticipated from Montevideo, the first stopover of her Latin American tour, that the United States intended to “help” in the Malvinas dispute between London and Buenos Aires. The conflict had in past weeks heated up as a result of the beginning of hydrocarbon exploration in the Southern Atlantic areas that Argentina claims to possess despite British rejections.

This newspaper has discovered that the government actually took Hillary’s words literally. They are the same words that several U.S. administrations have always used, so as to not alter the British alliance. They signaled that a real change in U.S. policy would be for the country to back the United Nations — a complaint that Argentina makes year after year in the organization. In all, Hillary’s statements imply a slight shift in the discourse that Washington had been supporting. On Friday, the chief diplomat for the region, Arturo Valenzuela, smiling little, had rejected every possibility of speaking about the Malvinas. This affirmed that the islands weren’t going to be a topic of conversation between Cristina and Hillary.

The president and the secretary of state, who spent last night with their delegations at the Hotel Panamericano, made public only yesterday their single difference regarding the coup in Honduras this past June and the special elections that followed in November — which the United States endorses and the Southern Cone rejects. But for Washington the Malvinas question has been, until now, a matter that is more clear than uncomfortable, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s support of Margaret Thatcher when she decided to drive out the Argentine troops that landed on the islands on April 2, 1982.

Precedents

This is not the first time the United States offered to help in the Malvinas Islands conflict. The last time was during the 1982 war, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, Alexander Haig, who died [Feb. 20] at 85. The conflict had hardly broken out when Haig traveled twice between London and Buenos Aires in an attempt to avoid war.

Although he was officiating as mediator, his country was far from neutral. From the beginning, satellite information was being passed to Great Britain about Argentine ship movement. A tripartite government was proposed for the islands but the military junta [of Argentina] rejected the plan as unacceptable.

*Editor’s note: Clinton wore light blue, the color of the Argentine flag.