A Rock and ghost ships

April 2 is long gone from the calender and we are now bracing for June 14, the anniversary of the Argentine military surrender to end the 74-day war of 1982. Meanwhile, London and Buenos Aires are both adjusting their sights for their parting shots — stunts to prevent the ghost of the 30th anniversary (and its political exploitation in the present) from staying out of the memories and the daily lives of either the British or Argentine people for even a moment.

June 14 (or “Liberation Day,” as the British call it) will find President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner heading up the Argentine delegation at the United Nations Decolonization Committee. It will be the first presence of an Argentine head of state at that UN committee in New York. In contrast with this image of a president “stooping” to committee level to highlight the importance of the issue, Her Majesty’s Government will fly Foreign Office Minister (i.e. No.2) Jeremy Browne as master of ceremonies to the Malvinas.

Nevertheless, the Port Stanley ceremony does not claim to be just a special parade for the war dead, veterans and families on both sides of the conflict. Busy Browne (perhaps the frequent flier of the year after two swings through South America) will be accompanied by Gibraltar Labour Minister Joe Bossano. His presence will undoubtedly leave a far more symbolic (and thorny) message than the Foreign Office’s second-in-command.

Self-determination

And not just because of Bossano’s track record as a former trade unionist educated at the London School of Economics, twice Chief Minister of the “Overseas Territory” of the Rock and a member of the ruling Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party (GSLP). What Bossano most or best represents is his militantly inflexible stance against returning Gibraltar to Spain, which lays claims to the British overseas territory. “Give Spain No Hope” has been his slogan for decades now.

Whether by chance or not, as if to drive the message completely home (or rub salt even more into the wounds), Bossano will land on the disputed islands after a stopover in Ecuador. Nothing extraordinary about that prior stop in Quito, except that he will attend a seminar organized by the United Nations. Its subject? Nothing less than decolonization.

In Quito he will be sure to reaffirm Gibraltar’s right to self-determination and its veto rights over any agreement reached between Spain and the United Kingdom. This will not precisely be music in the ears of the Argentine government, which dismisses any chance of self-determination for the islanders out of hand. But nor will it sound any better for Spain, which in recent weeks, amid its financial debacle and plunging credit ratings, has seen how London stokes the flames of a fire never entirely extinguished over the Gibraltar issue.