Don’t Cry for Malvinas : Issue of the Falklands’ future deserves to be talked about--calmly

In Great Britain, folks still call them the Falkland Islands, and in Argentina people still insist on calling them las Islas Malvinas-- and that’s unlikely to change any time in the near future.

London and Buenos Aires have had rival claims to the islands, 250 miles off the Argentine coast, since a British colony was established there in 1833. But that did not prevent the two nations from maintaining close, and often profitable, relations with each other for almost 150 years.

That changed when a military junta in Argentina, eager to distract public attention from domestic economic and political troubles, decided to force the issue by occupying the islands in early 1982. The Argentine invaders were ousted by a British military expedition in June of that year. The junta in Buenos Aires collapsed shortly afterward.

The civilian governments that have run Argentina since then have had more than their share of faults, but similarly grandiose schemes to conquer las Malvinas have not been among them. In fact, given the fierce nationalistic pride that Argentines feel over the islands, Buenos Aires has been downright reasonable on the issue while London looks stubborn and unyielding.

Now no Argentine government is about to give up the nation’s historic claim to the islands. That would be political suicide. And for its part, the government of British Prime Minister John Major insists the issue of British sovereignty over the islands is not negotiable, either. Given the Iron Lady reputation that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made by retaking the Falklands, that is only smart politically, too. But sovereignty is not what the Argentines want to talk about. President Carlos Saul Menem, who restored full diplomatic relations with Great Britain in 1990, just wants to resume the direct transportation service between the islands and the Argentine mainland. That’s not an unreasonable proposal, and the Major government should seriously consider it. Nine years after the brief war over those sparsely populated islands in the South Atlantic came to an end, there is very little reason for relations between Great Britain and Argentina to still be strained over this issue.