President Javier Milei’s government and the United Kingdom have announced an agreement that will pave the way for flights direct from mainland Argentina to the disputed Malvinas (Falkland) Islands.
Following a meeting on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly of the United Nations unfolding this week in New York, Foreign Minister Diana Mondino and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy reached agreement that will see the restarting of weekly flights from São Paulo to the Malvinas with a monthly stopover in Córdoba, discontinued in 2020.
The diplomats also agreed "to organise a flight to the islands for the families of the fallen before the end of 2024 so that they may visit the tombs of the soldiers resting there."
The Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires highlighted that these measures will permit advances in a "more ambitious cooperation agenda in different areas and under the sovereignty [safeguard] formula tending to promote human and economic development while improving ties between the Islands and the mainland."
Argentina and Britain’s Foreign Office both "welcomed the measures being implemented to improve the bilateral relationship and agreed to hold further discussions at a future opportunity," read a statement.
"The need to advance with concrete measures in favour of fisheries conservation and improved connectivity was established in virtue of the arrangements made in 2018 [under the so-called ‘Foradori-Duncan agreement’], including the resumption of the weekly flight from São Paulo to the Islands with a monthly stopover in Córdoba," underlined the Foreign Ministry communiqué.
At the same time, it resolved to "resume the negotiations towards finalising the third phase of the Humanitarian Project Plan [for visiting the graves of the war dead] jointly with the International Red Cross."
The Malvinas, located 400 kilometres off the coast of Argentina and almost 13,000 kilometres from the UK, was the scene of a 74-day war between the two nations in 1982, which ended with Argentina’s surrender.
More than 900 people were killed in the conflict: 649 Argentines and 255 Britons.
News of the accord was met angrily with government critics, including Mondino’s predecessor as foreign minister, Santiago Cafiero.
"Reverting to the scheme of [mainland] flights and ‘economic development’ is turning a back on our claims, raffling away national sovereignty and yielding to extortion," pointed out Cafiero, making clear his disagreement.
Cafiero’s words triggered a debate over the transparency of the Malvinas negotiations. According to the ex-minister, the agreement would revive a previous controversial pact: "[President Javier] Milei and Mondino, behind the backs of Congress and the Argentine people, are reviving the Foradori-Duncan pact which we denounced in March, 2023."
"The Foreign Ministry communiqué is grave. The Milei government is using the Humanitarian Project Plan for the identification of the war dead and the visit of their families [to their tombs] to justify concessions to British interests," said Cafiero, referring to the servicemen who lost their lives in the 1982 conflict.
Since that conflict Argentina has claimed sovereignty over the islands by diplomatic means.
In 2018, the two countries agreed to authorise weekly Latam flights from São Paulo to the Malvinas with a monthly Córdoba stopover due to the British rejection of direct mainland flights to the archipelago from Argentine soil but they were suspended by the United Kingdom in 2020 for health reasons in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Argentina later withdrew permission in March, 2023.
Early this year Mondino expressed her "unease" over then-British foreign secretary David Cameron’s February visit to the archipelago during the G20 ministerial summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Cameron was replaced by Lammy, of Guyanese descent, when the Conservative government lost the UK elections to the Labour Party in early July.
During that visit Cameron affirmed that he hoped that this territory claimed by Argentina would continue under UK administration "for a long time, possibly forever," prompting Tierra del Fuego Governor Gustavo Melella (whose jurisdiction also covers the Antarctic and the Malvinas) to consider the visit "a provocation" and to declare Cameron "persona non grata."
Cameron’s visit was the first by a British Foreign Secretary to the archipelago in three decades following Douglas Hurd in 1994.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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