Falklands: Symbol of British world presence, Argentine loss By Veronica Sardon

dpa German Press Agency Published: Tuesday March 27, 2007

Buenos Aires- Twenty-five years have passed since
Argentina and Britain fought an unlikely war over the tiny, remote
Falkland Islands, in the chilly South Atlantic waters off the
Argentine coast.
The April 2 to June 14, 1982 conflict - in which 649 Argentine and
255 British soldiers died, along with three civilian islanders - put
the archipelago on the global map and reinforced contemporary
Britain's world presence.

Argentina continues to assert its claim on the Falklands and its
2,000 plus residents, as it has since the early nineteenth century,
as natural heir to the colonial power Spain.

But Britain has had effective control of islands since 1833 -
using force, Buenos Aires insists. And UN calls to dialogue have
crashed against London's insistence on self-determination over
sovereignty claims.

The islands will be British for as long as their inhabitants
wish to remain so, says the London government.

During the most recent census in 2001, only 2,379 people lived
in the Falklands, some 480 kilometres east of the Argentine coast.
Nearly 2,000 live in Port Stanley. Penguins are the main natural
attraction, and the local economy rests on the production of
fisheries and wool.

Richard Davies, legislative councillor in the Falkland
Islands government, agreed in an interview with Deutsche Presse-
Agentur dpa that the islands have benefited greatly from the
conflict's aftermath.

"As a result of the war, I think we'd say that we have been given
the opportunity, thanks to Britain. And we've made the most of it
and we've turned ourselves into a very successful territory, both
financially and in democratic terms," he said.

Britain's military presence gives it a strategic watch tower over
the area where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet.

Economically, the Falklands are clearly no Hong Kong, and
Argentina is just as obviously no China. The islands are also no
Gibraltar, but their inhabitants - like those of the territory on the
Iberian Peninsula - wish to remain under British sovereignty, and
Britain to this day wants to respect that will.

In 1982, an ailing Argentine military dictatorship thought it
could pump up its standing by taking the Falklands - known as the
Malvinas in Spanish - with little trouble. It assumed that London
would barely consider a serious military attempt at repelling an
aggression many thousands of kilometres away.

"The military plan was conceived with the idea that the
recuperation of the islands would force a negotiation and not a
military response from Britain," journalist Eduardo van der Kooy
told dpa.

The co-author of the book Malvinas, la Trama Secreta (Falklands,
the Secret Plot) pointed to other mistakes made by the Argentine
leadership, such as the belief that its support for Washington's
anti-communist efforts in Central and South America would
obtain "some degree of collaboration" from Washington in its
Falklands challenge.

However, General Leopoldo Galtieri and his regime were wrong.
London, provoked by the step, reclaimed the Falklands in 74 days,
giving the islands a relevance out of proportion with their size or
wealth and reflecting British commitment to the citizens of its old
empire.

"By the late 1980s, the estimated cost of the action and its
aftermath had reached 2 million pounds (some 3.9 million dollars) per
islander, but everyone seems to have stopped counting long ago,"
British author Julian Barnes complained graphically in a 2002
article in Britain's newspaper The Guardian.

Councillor Davies acknowledged that the islands are expensive, but
said it was up to Argentina to press its "anachronistic and
unjustified" sovereignty claim.

"We are grateful to Britain for supporting our rights and we
expect Britain to continue to do so. We think it's a just cause and
it's difficult to put a price on justice," he said.

Following the Falklands War, Britain and Argentina broke
diplomatic relations until 1990. The countries have since agreed that
each will "protect their respective positions on sovereignty while
making progress on practical matters of common interest such as
fisheries and de-mining," according to the British Foreign Office.

Indeed, some 120 minefields - with more than 25,000 antipersonnel
and antitank mines - remain buried in the islands since the war. The
munitions, which are clearly marked, have not caused recent deaths
and have no significant economic effect.

In 2001, the two countries agreed to study a joint mine clearance
project, according to an organization that monitors landmines
worldwide.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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