Falklands: Symbol of British world presence, Argentine loss

By Veronica Sardon Jun 14, 2007, 5:07 GMT

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 the 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 the United States' 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 this was due to Argentina's '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.