Buenos Aires. The Argentine government wants to renegotiate sovereignty over the Falkland Islands/Malvinas with Great Britain. Argentinian Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said so earlier this month after meeting his British counterpart James Cleverly at the G-20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in New Delhi via the short message service Twitter communicated.
Almost 41 years after the war between Argentina and Great Britain over the archipelago in the South Atlantic, Argentina not only called for negotiations, which the Argentine government has repeated several times, but also a symbolic step: Cafiero announced that Argentina would emerge from the Foradori-Duncan -Pact will exit and called for a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York.
The Foradori-Duncan Pact was struck in 2016, at a meeting between Argentine Vice Chancellor Carlos Foradori and British Foreign Secretary Alan Duncan in Argentina. At the time, the economically liberal, conservative government of Mauricio Macri was in power in Argentina. With the agreement, both countries wanted to deepen their political and economic ties. The agreement regulates the production of gas and oil, as well as dealing with fishing and shipping in the disputed area.
However, the agreement also contains paragraphs on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on cooperation in organized crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. Also on cultural and educational exchanges or research collaboration in Antarctica between the Argentine and British Arctic Institutes.
Both sides also agreed to take measures to “remove all obstacles hampering economic growth and sustainable development on the islands” – particularly in the areas of trade, fisheries, shipping and fuels.
After the deal was signed, Foradori had to justify himself to Parliament. There are too many concessions to the British side. This criticism was repeated again and again in the following years. The situation came to a head when, from April 2022, several Argentinian media outlets reported Duncan’s biography “In the Thick of It” reported. In it, Duncan describes the meeting with Foradori: The agreement was signed in a winery, Foradori was drunk at the moment of signing, so that he could hardly remember the exact contents the next day.
The publications prompted Cafiero already back then to initiate an internal investigation.
Another point in the agreement, later disputed, is the authorization of flights between the South American mainland and the islands with a stop in Argentina. According to the agreement, there should be two additional stops in Argentina per month. Specifically, it was about the resumption of a flight by the Brazilian airline Latam, which would have landed from Sao Paulo first in Córdoba in Argentina and then at the Mount Pleasant military base on the islands. This flight was also part of the agreement from 2018, which was carried out until the beginning of the corona restrictions in March 2020. Last Tuesday, the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs canceled the flight permit for this flight and announced that it will not be resumed in the future.
The withdrawal from the Duncan Pact by the Argentine side comes almost ten years after the referendum on the islands on March 10th and 11th, 2013. The representatives of the islands repeatedly refer to this referendum in talks before the United Nations, to protect everyone to declare Argentine claims to the islands illegitimate. The islands thus refer to the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, Article 1 of the UN Social Charter.
However, the UN special committee on decolonization has been calling on both sides (UN Resolution 2065) to negotiate since 1965. After the announcement Cafieris wrote his British counterpart, also via Twitter: “The Falkland Islands are British. The islanders have the right to decide their own future – they have chosen to be a self-governing British Overseas Territory.”
Cleverly is referring to the 2013 referendum, when 99.8 per cent of people on the islands voted to be British.
Referring to that referendum, the islands’ Legislative Assembly MP Leona Roberts said in a statement last Friday: “Ten years ago Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a British Overseas Territory and that feeling hasn’t changed .” The Legislative Assembly was disappointed with Argentina’s decision to withdraw from the Foradori-Duncan Pact. “We are a self-contained and democratic society and the Falkland Islanders” would have shown the world “how eternally grateful we are to the UK for helping us in 1982”. Residents are convinced “that they are part of the British family and live at liberty under the government of our choice,” Roberts said.