Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero demanded this Thursday at the United Nations that the United Kingdom stop its “exercise of colonial power” and resume negotiations with Argentina to find a peaceful solution on the Malvinas, in a speech 40 years after the war. “Neither Argentina nor international law admit force, usurpation and privileges,” he cried. “It’s time for the UK not to be afraid of peace.”
Cafiero spoke before the UN Special Committee on Decolonization that dealt with the controversy over the islands on Thursday. Every year, no matter who rules our country, Argentina makes the claim in this Committee in New York.
But this time the claim takes on a stronger and more symbolic dimension because it marks the 40th anniversary of the war.
Cafiero stressed at the beginning of his speech that the Malvinas issue “unites Argentines.” And he stressed that on his trip to New York he is accompanied by a large delegation from Congress, government officials and opponents, as well as the Governor of the province of Tierra del Fuego and other representatives of different levels of government and civil society.
“It is a demonstration of the relevance that the Argentine people attaches to the Malvinas issue and of our unwavering commitment to the recovery of the effective exercise of sovereignty,” he said.
Cafiero said he thanked the committee for its “persistence in putting an end to a situation as anachronistic as colonialism, a remnant that persists in today’s world and in my own country.”
The chancellor made a chronology of the historic dispute and said that the United Kingdom today “conditions the resumption of negotiations to the consent of the inhabitants of the Islands, ignores what is established by the General Assembly and ignores that in this case there is no a people subject to colonial subjugation, domination or exploitation. On the contrary, the composition of the population of the Islands is the result of the colonization initiated by the United Kingdom in 1833 that tried by all means to preserve the “British character” of that population”.
“Consequently, the right to self-determination is not applicable to the question of the Malvinas Islands. On the other hand, the territorial integrity of Argentina must be respected, which was broken with the British act of force of 1833, never consented to by the Argentine Government.
He also referred to a “double standard” of the United Kingdom on other countries and its situation on the Malvinas. “Is it that there are democracies that are worth more than others? Are there States authorized to breach the UN Charter and we did not read the fine print? The international community must act or it will be complicit in the double standards of those who are promoters of the values of multilateralism in a foreign land”.
“Today more than ever the positions are visible; for the United Kingdom, Malvinas is domination, speculation and opportunism; for my country, it is sovereignty, justice and pain for our fallen, ”she pointed out.
“It is time for the United Kingdom to listen to the international community and resume negotiations to reach a peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute with the Argentine Republic. Don’t be afraid of peace. Let him lose the fear of dialogue within international law,” Cafiero claimed.
And he stressed that “Argentina is the country that insistently invites the United Kingdom to resume negotiations to put an end to the sovereignty dispute.”
Argentina also expressed its concern about the possible presence of nuclear weapons in the Malvinas Islands, “especially after learning through recently declassified British documents that show that during the 1982 conflict the United Kingdom sent ships to the region equipped with with 31 nuclear weapons, which represented at that time 65% of its stock of deep-sea nuclear bombs”.
Cafiero closed his speech with a claim: “We ask this Special Committee to once again express clearly and firmly its conviction that there is no more place for colonialism in the 21st century.”
