Falklands foes start secret talks

Press, 20 July 1984, Page 6

Falklands foes start secret talks

NZPA-Reuter Berne Argentina and Britain were holding more secret talks today in a first round of direct discussions since they fought a war over the Falkland Islands two years ago. Senior officials from both countries met yesterday. The leader of the Argentinian delegation, a Foreign Ministry official, Marcello Delpech, returned to his hotel from an undisclosed location shortly before midnight. He said that there had been “preliminary contact,” but declined more comment and would not specify with whom he had spoken. Details of the talks, chaired by a Swiss Foreign Ministry official, Edouard Brunner, are being kept strictly confidential. But while British officials have said that the meetings

are aimed at reducing tension in the South Atlantic, trouble was apparently already brewing yesterday over the agenda of the talks. The Argentinian Foreign Minister, Mr Dante Caputo, said in Buenos Aires that the thorny issue of sovereignty over the Britishruled, Argentine-claimed Falkland Islands could be included as the talks had an open agenda. But a British Government spokesman said, “We have made it quite clear we are not prepared to discuss sovereignty.” The five-man British delegation at Berne is led by David Thomas, Undersecretary for American Affairs, and includes Andrew Palmer, head of the Foreign Office’s Falkland Islands department, the British Foreign Office says. The British spokesman

said that London felt better bilateral relations would be in the interests of both countries and the 1800 Falkland Islanders. London and Buenos Aires severed diplomatic relations after Argentina invaded the Falklands, a British colony which it calls the Malvinas and has long claimed for itself, in April, 1982. Britain launched a big seaborne assault on the islands and evicted Argentinian forces in mid-June after bitter fighting which cost the two countries some 2000 dead. A Swiss Government spokesman said that the informal talks had been organised at Swiss initiative. Switzerland and Brazil have managed Anglo-Argen-tinian relations since the Falklands war, and Brazilian diplomats were also sitting in on the session.