STATEMENT BY THE PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF URUGUAY
H.E. AMBASSADOR DR. FELIPE H.
PAOLILLO
Special
Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration
on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
New York, June 19th
2002
Mr. Chairman,
“Desire
the right”. In Spanish meaning to "wish for the right” or to “aspire
the right”, or maybe to “search for justice”, for it seems more appropriate to
desire the justice, which is a value, rather than the law, which is an
instrument. "Desire the right". A beautiful motto that in its
brevity expresses in a very eloquent manner the permanent desire of mankind and
of nations that the law be respected, that justice be done.
Curiously,
this motto is part of the coat of arms that distinguishes an entity created and
maintained in violation of the law and whose legal status is based upon
ignoring the principles of justice.
Indeed, this entity that some call Falkland Islands, constituted by a
group of persons established in the Argentinean territory of the Islas
Malvinas, was born from a violation of the international law: the conquest by
the force of one State, of a territory under the sovereignty of another State.
In fact,
as we all know and as it has countless times said in this same forum, the
possession of the islands by Britain is not founded on any legitimate title: it
is not an “occupation” in its technical-juridical sense, for at the time of the
dispossession, the Malvinas Islands were not res nullius, nor an abandoned
territory, nor a territory to whose title the sovereign had resigned. Neither
is the prescription, given the fact that although the British possession of the
islands has been continued for more than one century and a half, the
contestation of such possession by the real sovereign has also been continued.
Therefore it becomes obvious that we are not in front of a peaceful or
consented possession as required by doctrine, including that of the most
prestigious British jurists.
The only ground on which the British
claim lies upon is an act of force committed against the territorial
sovereignty of Argentina. That act of dispossession committed in 1833 seems to
be a raw and anticipated illustration of the assertion that the British
authorities have been repeating 170 years after, when referring to the Malvinas
Islands, stating that “sovereignty is not negotiable”. In fact, sovereignty is
not negotiable. It is violated.
Meanwhile,
the Malvinas Islands remain as a remote anachronism that denotes the British
presence in the South Atlantic. A
presence that could have had a principle of justification from a strategic
viewpoint in former times when the oceans of the world were the Mare Nostrum of
the British empire.
It does not seem appropriate to
repeat once again the reasons or the historical facts that so many times have
been evoked in this forum as well as in others, which demonstrate that the
Malvinas Islands are Argentinean from every viewpoint from where it is seen: legal,
historical, geographical, geological. Even the demographic viewpoint could have
been added were not that in 1833, the new occupants of the islands expelled
their former settlers and since then, did not authorize the establishment of
any Argentinean citizen.
The only
thing that seems fit now is to insist on the need that the two governments
involved in this dispute show their peaceful vocation and start negotiations
towards a normalization of the situation of the Malvinas Islands according to
law and to justice. This is what the international community has been
requesting for a long time through decisions adopted in many international
organizations, in particular, the General Assembly of this Organization as well
as the General Assembly of the Organization of American States, which has
pronounced itself on this issue early this month in Barbados.
To end this possession based on
illegality, this unfair dismembering of the territorial integrity of Argentina,
this situation which throws shadows over a history which, like the British one,
is full of remarkable events and realizations, this political anomaly that
affects negatively the friendship between the two countries, this dispute which
frustrates the hope of the countries of the region into making a true area of
peace and cooperation in the South Atlantic, to put an end to this situation, I
repeat, is a goal which must be achieved at short term. Thus, benefiting all
sides, including the inhabitants of the Malvinas Islands, whom in this way
could see that the motto of their coat of arms is finally fulfilled.
Thank you.