A Major Breakthrough

[Johnmcd]

Dear all,
Please read the report from the Times and apply its contents to the islands relationship with Argentina.

TEXT

BY DAVID SHARROCK, IN MADRID


AFTER centuries of laying siege to Gibraltar, Spanish attempts to regain sovereignty over the Rock are about to undergo a revision as Madrid finally opts to woo its inhabitants.
Preparations for the U-turn in Spain’s position on Gibraltar have been quietly put in place by Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the new socialist Government’s Foreign Minister, who will meet his British counterpart Jack Straw in Madrid today.



The new Spanish policy is expected to be felt almost immediately by Gibraltarians, who have come to expect unnecessary delays at the border with La Linea and attempts to stifle its tourist trade.
The Spanish Government has decided to put negotiations on British sovereignty over Gibraltar on hold and concentrate instead on improving its relations with the inhabitants by fostering greater co-operation at the local cross-border level. “It’s an important shift,” said a British diplomatic source yesterday. “The fact that they have committed publicly to a policy of cooperation with Gibraltar contrasts with what we’ve seen from previous governments, when there have been examples of what some people have called harassment.
“This is a good thing — Gibraltar wants it, the local area adjoining Gibraltar wants it, it makes sense.”
The same source said the Spanish initiative — which has long been awaited by London and Gibraltar — seemed to chime with Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s “buen talante” or new mood which he has brought to government.
The meeting between the two Foreign Ministers in effect ends the so-called Brussels Process, which began in 1986 and reached its zenith with a declaration by the Government two years ago that it was prepared to share sovereignty with Spain over Gibraltar.
The declaration was rejected by Gibraltarians in a referendum in 2002, and since then Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe, has stated repeatedly that Spain’s best hope of regaining the territory is to embark on a process of wooing the Rock’s population which would inevitably take at least a generation to succeed.
Spanish government sources quoted by El Pais newspaper acknowledged that the Gibraltar referendum could not be ignored, even though Spain would not be formally renouncing its claim over the Rock.
Madrid would now be prepared to include Gibraltar’s elected representatives in talks with British officials under a new forum-based rolling dialogue. It believes that an agreement can quickly be achieved over the joint use of Gibraltar’s airport. At present, Spain does not permit the use of its airspace to planes landing at or taking off at Gibraltar.
The news of the revised policy was welcomed by Peter Caruana, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, who succeeded last month in ending three years of silence between Gibraltar and Madrid by holding talks with Jose Pons, the Spanish Secretary of State for Europe.
Mr Caruana said that the new Government had made more effort than its predecessor to improve relations with Gibraltar, although he accepted that Spain’s aspiration to regain sovereignty over Gibraltar, ceded to Britain in 1713, was still upheld.

[Sakura26]

Hi John

A very sad news indeed. I would had expected our mother land to do better. They are not recovering the territory by giving up...I can see now why Spain is part of the less-developped countries in Europe.
Luckily, that is not going to happen in Argentina. I don't know what was the reaction of spanish people, but I do know what would be the reaction here if any of our presidents would even dare to suggest such a crazy idea......

Regards
Noelia

[Hutch]

Noelia.
I'm very disappointed at your comments. I hope that other Argentines don't feel the same because such a policy can only lead to years more frustration for Argentina.


Have they given up? No, no and no again. Read what it says-
'Spain would not be formally renouncing its claim over the Rock. '
'Spain’s aspiration to regain sovereignty over Gibraltar, ceded to Britain in 1713, was still upheld.'

Sad news? That Spain has decided on friendship and negotiation rather than aggression and impossible demands?

Its very clear that Spain has not given up.
Has the Treaty of Utrecht been dissolved? No.
Has Spain renounced its claim? No.
Has the territory been ceded formally to the UK with no restrictions? No.
Did the Rock insist that Spain renounce her claim before talks could start? No.
Did Spain drop her claim in order to get on better terms with the Rock? No.

What has happened is that a Spanish government has the intelligence and courage to realize that its previous policy was one of total failure. Instead of continuing to humiliate herself in fruitless assaults on Gib, Spain decided to act like a grown up. Like a neighbour. By acting in this way Spain has shown that she is serious about engaging with the Rock and that she is a friend not a threat.

A stark contast to the pride driven policy of utter, utter failure that Argentina follows. Out of the two countrys policy's, which do you think will be more successfull-one of engagement or one of isolation?

It has taken a Spainish government more guts to make this move than to indulge in petty border restrictions and harrassement. A crazy idea? Actually a brilliant political move which puts more emphasis on the UK/Gib to improve relations. Then again maybe the Spanish government has more faith in its claim and sees that a friendly policy will not do it any harm, unlike Argentina which sems to think that any slight deviation from 'Give Us The Islands Now!' will invalidate her claim. Why is Argentina so terrified of (honest, openended)negotiation and getting to know the Islanders better?

Will Argentina see sense and follow a similiar policy, will she 'inherit' Spains sense here? Or will pride once again mean that she is incapable of opening friendship and diaglogue with a neighbour?

I hope that Argentina is brave enough to take the initiative, retain her claim but seek to improve relations with the FI like Spain has with the Rock.

Hutch

[Johnmcd]

Noelia, Hutch.
This forum has only attracted a few Argentine nationals of the same ilk. Fortunately, I know more Argentine's, here in the UK, and by e-mail who will see this development with Spain and Gib as a definate way ahead in the dispute. Effectively this new accord takes away all the ridiculous nonsense we hear so often. I must also say that Argentina is posed to go the same as Spain; reflected by their foriegn ministry.

I see the Falklands/Malvinas dispute over sovereignty being freezed to allow normalisation. It's the only way now for all.

Sad news? No the best news since Franco was disposed of and definately a wake up call for all those Argentine's that still hanker over their past fascist leaders.

The days of the Generals are bloddy well over!

Time for those with moral guts and belief in freedom to be heard above the racket!

Best wishes,
John.

[Gabriel]

John,

you wrote: "Time for those with moral guts and belief in freedom to be heard above the racket!"


I couldn't agree with you more!

www.johnkerry.com/index.html

[Sakura26]

John

This forum has only attracted a few Argentine nationals of the same ilk.

What an awful comment from you. What kind of person you consider me to be?
We have a reputation of having a big ego. It's probably true, but british ego is far bigger let me say.

1) Britain is doing the right thing with the Falklands
2) Britain is right about keeping Gibraltar
3) Britain is absolutely correct helping the US in Irak

Does Britain never make a mistake? The rest of the world that have different opinions or is in the other side like me is catalogued as "fascist?"

I have also met british who would gladly apologise to Argentina and give the Falklands back to our people if they were Britain's Prime Mminister......

How are you ready to understand middle eastern people if you quickly consider "fascist" people who are trying to recover a territory stolen?

The only thing Britain is ready for is to be stopped. Hopefully China or someone will.....

[Hutch]

More On The New Deal With Spain.


Anglo-Spanish talks over Gibraltar were spectacularly relaunched yesterday in a co-operative spirit unprecedented for many years: Spain downgraded its sovereignty claim to a "wish", and agreed for the first time for Gibraltarians to be fully involved in determining the future of the Rock.

Speaking after a meeting between the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos in Madrid yesterday, the two ministers fell over themselves in their expressions of mutual regard and their desire to make progress on the centuries-long dispute, in partnership with the Gibraltarians.

They promised "a new forum for dialogue with an open agenda in which Gibraltar would have its own voice. The modalities for this dialogue will agreed by all the parties." The process remains, however, "in the future tense" as Mr Straw put it, and no dates were given.

Mr Moratinos said: "We want to give the Gibraltarian people and the authorities of Gibraltar the opportunity to participate. We need Gibraltar involved: that's the only way forward. Today we've made an important step in the long process to reconcile Spain's wish to recover sovereignty and the interests of the Gibraltarians."

Points to be discussed in the new forum include an agreement for joint use of Gibraltar airport; to allow planes flying to Gibraltar to divert to Spanish airports if necessary; to resolve the problem of pensions for Spaniards who had worked on the Rock. Spain also agreed to allow cruise liners visiting Gibraltar to dock at any Spanish port, settling an ugly row that soured relations in the spring.

Mr Straw said he had spoken to Gibraltar's Chief Minister Peter Caruana after yesterday's meeting, and said Mr Caruana was "entirely content" with the outcome. It is significant, because Gibraltar has long complained that Britain and Spain cooked up bilateral deals behind its back, and resists any threat to its British status.

An Anglo-Spanish proposal for "joint sovereignty" was dropped after Gibraltarians voted overwhelmingly against the plan in a referendum nearly two years ago. Progress jammed until last May when Mr Moratinos visited Mr Straw in London.

"We will always honour the wishes of Gibraltar as to their future: unless we have their active consent there is no point in having discussions," Mr Straw said yesterday, in recognition of Gibraltar's proven ability to sink anything it didn't like.

But instead of the usual Spanish recriminations that the Rock's colonial status was an obstructive anachronism in modern Europe, Mr Moratinos insisted that the feelings of the people of Gibraltar were as important as the land itself. Spain's socialist government wants to woo them. "With the new attitude we'll find support and agreement among Gibraltarians," he said.

Spain's friendlier approach is reflected in joint developments between Gibraltar and the neighbouring region in Andalucia, that Mr Straw welcomed as part of the "practical work" the three parties pledged to undertake. Sovereignty - a Spanish "objective", according to the ministers - floated vaguely in the background, sidelined in Spain's new desire to please.



With this move Spain has restarted stalled talks, allayed many fears of the Rocks inhabitants, got the Rocks people involved in the process willingly and set the stage for events to move on to all parties satisfaction. A far cry from the policy of willing failure used by Argentina.

[Johnmcd]

Noelia,
I assume the kind of person you are is someone very human – like the rest of us. I too can be indignant when you find out that you can be wrong…or is peace and reconciliation lost in translation?

22 years ago I fought in a most ridiculous post-colonial conflict. It should never have happened, but it did and I can’t change that, though I wish I could for those families from both sides that lost their young men. There were no winners in the long run.

Today we have maintained the peace and worked together in a way not thought possible 22 years ago - but yet Argentina still claims the land and by doing so, claims the people who live there. These two clear aspects go hand in hand.

Your position and that of others who share similar views to you are aimless and shiftless – a continuous roundabout of the same old arguments that lost meaning years ago. We have moved on and so has the Argentine government.

So it is heartening to see Spain taking a lead in the normalisation of relationships with Gib. This has had an immediate impact here in the UK and indeed in Gib. Both Spain and Gib can now go ahead with a whole host of joint enterprises that will benefit everyone living in the region. It is great to hear! No one has lost face, no one has to shift from substantial positions – they have simply shoved it all to one side so that they can get on with life.

How can this be sad?

Not sad at all and something that Argentina will no doubt follow in the very near future. You might not like that as you appear to be oppositional to anything said contrary to your own view.

Best wishes,
John.

[Johnmcd]

Gabriel,
Thanks for your agreement!

Another article from the Times that shows another side - it makes kind of sense - see what you think...

Look at Bush's enemies: they are the reason why he deserves re-election
GERARD BAKER

FOUR YEARS ago, when I covered the last US presidential election campaign, it was hard to be impressed with George W. Bush. He seemed a callow sort, propelled effortlessly towards the presidency by a combination of heredity and money, swagger and bonhomie.
It didn’t matter that he couldn’t name the President of Chechnya. It was more troubling that he could not really say why he wanted to be American President at all.



I would certainly have preferred the Republican senator John McCain, one of the few men I have met for whom I would be prepared to leap in front of a flying bullet. If he had not been such an insufferable prig, I might even have preferred Al Gore. But those were fat, happy, complacent times. The election was about nothing; who cared who won? Having an aimless, shiftless president seemed somehow appropriate.

There have been many times in the past four years when that initial judgment on Mr Bush seemed vindicated. His economic policies have been stunningly reckless. It was right to respond to the collapse of the 1990s bubble by easing fiscal policy; but Mr Bush’s approach was precisely the wrong way round. It has jeopardised the nation’s long-term fiscal health, while doing little to provide immediate economic stimulus.

His easy abandonment of free trade principle over steel tariffs and farm subsidies was a disturbing glimpse of political opportunism at work. He has happily signed every spending Bill that has been presented to him, making him the most fiscally incontinent leader in living memory.

His governing approach is secretive and overweening. That the War on Terror requires constraints on the liberties that Americans have long enjoyed is without question. But Mr Bush has been too ready for my taste to abandon the most basic civil protections on some pretty flimsy grounds.

In Iraq the catalogue of errors his Administration has made is a serious count against his re-election. The US did not plan, it seems, in any meaningful way for the challenge of running an ethnically diverse foreign country 8,000 miles away in a volatile region with little experience of self-rule and an unhappy history of foreign intervention. It did not send enough forces to pacify and secure the country. It stumbled from one grave error to another in constructing an occupying administration. It did not provide enough resources for the task of reconstruction. The one thing America should surely have done in the days after the fall of Saddam was to shower the Iraqi people with money.

The reason for all these misjudgments is the biggest indictment of all: a set of absurdly over-optimistic assumptions about the postwar situation. Summed up, they went like this. The Iraqis will love us and the freedom we will bring; the world will flock to help us when we uncover the weapons of mass destruction; and the country will rebuild itself with billions of dollars in oil revenues. All nice possibilities in an ideal world. Nobody seemed to prepare for the slight chance that they might not happen.

But for all this, if I had a vote on Tuesday I would be voting to re-elect President Bush.

It is partly Mr Bush’s character. The perils of war really do demand leadership and moral clarity. It is partly, to be honest, the quality of his opponent. The more you see of John Kerry the more troubling the thought of his presidency becomes. Behind a lifetime of careful, calculated decision-making it is clear that he harbours a deep suspicion about the very idea of moral clarity in foreign policy.

It is partly what Mr Bush has done. Afghanistan is an infinitely better and less threatening place today than it was four years ago. Iraq, despite the catalogue of errors, is still heading that way.

But above all, in this oppositional sort of age, when it is often easier to be defined by what one is against rather than what one is for, I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Mr Bush’s re-election.

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe.Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else’s fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation’s morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

[Gabriel]

John,

This is one of the most stupid commentaries I've read recently. According to it, if you don't think GW is the man for the job, you are an tontoe. And what kind of decent right wing propaganda would not use the opportunity to blame the French? Hey, it is not "fish and chips" without the potatoes, right? Without those bastard French intellectuals there would be no disease, no famine, no indigence, no racism, no pollution, no immorality, etc. Those French SOB's probably invented Polio too. I sugest after GW gets re-elected, he should wipe out France from the map. We will live happily ever after!

May the farse be with you.

Gabriel

[Sakura26]

Hello All

The level of brainwashing is amazing.. Only time will tell who was right. Argentina is a friendly nation willing to recover its territories. A friendly nation with a pride to protect, like any other in the world. We'll try not to let our pride hurt more people like it happened in 1982, when we were NOT under a democracy and therefore the PEOPLE were not RULING the country. Is this understood? In 1982 Argentina was not a democracy and whatever we did, was not people's wishes.
The claim will not be dropped because we still believe the territories are ours. About the people living there, please let's discuss that on the new thread for that purpose.
If I am called fascist for thinking my country deserves territories that had been stolen from it, then you can call me Noelia Mussolini because I'm NOT changing my mind in any way.
Actually, it's amazing what some pressure could do. I knew I couldnt do that in Nora's forum, but if I had the chance to reply freely, sooner or later wise word exchange was going to be replaced by insults. Usually happens when you have no way out. I'm glad it didnt happen in my side. As I always say, if you know you're right, you dont need to insult.....

Best Wishes
Noelia Mussolini

[Johnmcd]

Gabriel,
I think the writer was attempting to highlight decisive leadership as opposed to Kerry who is just talk. I’ll be honest with you, I am no fan of US politics and I find the US elections a bore. GW I have never taken a liken to, Kerry who is full of himself and all the supporters getting all excited in stars and stripes. So much showmanship, and no vision.

Anyway, we love the French in the UK. This is the centenary of ‘Concorde Cordial’ so we are friends this year and until we celebrate the bi-centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar next year!

Merde!

John.

[Johnmcd]

Noelia,
The level of brainwashing is amazing..

Too true! how about Hutch's request on what your kids are taught at school about the Malvinas? Do they get copies of Gento to read for instance.

Best wishes,
John Lennon aka Gandi

[Gabriel]

John,

I don't know what kind of news you get on the other side of the pond, but your comment "Kerry who is full of himself and all the supporters getting all excited in stars and stripes." actually describes GW. Decisive leadership?, there was a guy in Germany during the 30's who was also a very decisive leader.
Resolve is not a great thing if you are incompetent.
In any case, the election is not between Kerry and Bush, it is between Bush and No Bush. I hope No Bush wins on Tuesday.

Regards,

Gabriel

[Sakura26]

hello all

it's been a while seen I last read a 3rd or 4th year (elementary) school book and I dont know where I can get one, but if I find any with the Malvinas issue, I will scan the pages and show you here. However the book does not say "my little argentines, go kill evil english" it just explains, although Hutch conveniently doesnt take it as proofs, how the islands are part of the southamerican contienent and from Argentina.

Best Wishes
Noelia

PS: There's a difference between political propaganda and geography. The brainwashing it's been applied now on the british, not on us, at least not in this topic.