Falklands : NILE GARDNIER – HERE WE GO AGAIN!
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 02.11.2011 (Article Archived on 16.11.2011)
Truth is; US President Obama didn’t betray the British over the Falklands the first time, let alone what will happen when he meets Mrs Kirchner in Cannes at the G-20 Summit on Thursday.
NILE GARDNIER – HERE WE GO AGAIN!
An Editorial by J. Brock (FINN)
Nile Gardiner is at it again with an article on the Telegraph blog entitled “Will Barack Obama betray Britain again over the Falklands?” Truth is; US President Obama didn’t betray the British over the Falklands the first time, let alone what will happen when he meets Mrs Kirchner in Cannes at the G-20 Summit on Thursday.
As stated in FINN’s June 10th editorial, “For a third of a century the response from America and England has been the same, no matter who tried to fuel discord in the special relationship; and this time is no different. It is US policy to be neutral, siding neither with Argentina, Britain or the Falklands on the matter of sovereignty over the archipelago; and since 1985, at least, the US has backed negotiations to resolve the issue. Britain has no doubts about its sovereignty over the Falklands and champions the Islanders’ right to self-determination as enshrined in the UN Charter.”
US neutrality is a given no matter who writes the rubbish. The one message most media outlets refuse to hear is that the ‘special relationship’ is solid and has withstood two Gulf wars, Afghanistan, Bosnia and a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; let alone the Falklands.
I must relate this current flap to the fact that Remembrance Sunday is soon to be upon us and Poppies are already on sale in the shops and elsewhere in the UK. It’s the British Legion’s 90th birthday and how better to celebrate that than to slap the 252 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islands women who lost their lives in the 1982 conflict with Argentina in the face, aye Mr Gardiner?
Causing this recent anti-Falklands flap was a remark by Hector Timerman, Argentina’s Foreign Minister, when he told the conference at last weekend’s Ibero-Latin American ministerial meeting in Paraguay that the “Malvinas” are a “colonial dagger in America” and that Argentina “is not free of the colonial yoke but will not cease in attempting to achieve it.”
In other words, Argentina would like the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands to be a their colony instead of a UK Overseas Territory with the mandate for all but defence and foreign policy– and it would be jolly nice of Britain would agree to this during “negotiations” over sovereignty.
The White House has a lot of sense and has used it to stay neutral, allowing more important foreign affairs matters to be resolved. The Falklands issue is way down on the US priority list and I would imagine the UK has more pressing matters to consider as well. The formula of US neutrality and British unstinting support for the Falklands over the past 30 years has helped to keep the issue in its proper place.
Given the true neutrality policy of the US and the UK’s unstinting support of the Falkland Islanders’ right to self-determination enshrined in Chapter 1.2 of the UN Charter, the aforementioned article by Mr Gardiner deserves the rubbish bin.
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