United States will reiterate at the coming OAS General Assembly that the Falklands/Malvinas Islands difference is a bilateral issue to be resolved between Argentina and the UK, which means the US delegation, will not take position in a possible declaration in support of Argentina.
“Our policy is unchanged. We believe that this is a bilateral issue that needs to be worked out directly between Argentina and the United Kingdom. That’s what we are encouraging both sides to do” said Acting Under Secretary for Press Affairs at the State Department Mike Hammer during an exchange with reporters on Twitter.
Likewise “we are encouraging Argentina and the UK to work this out peacefully, to work it out through negotiations”.
Hammer anticipated that the coming Organization of American States to be held next week in Cochabamba, Bolivia will be “a good meeting” with a “good atmosphere”.
“What matters to the US is to work jointly with the hemisphere countries and so advance towards a better future, fight poverty, attack issues such as climate change and see how we can work together as we did at the recent Summit of the Americas in Colombia, and ensuring that human rights are respected, and strengthening democracy” added Hammer.
According to OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza the dispute over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands sovereignty will again be in the agenda of the OAS members’ Foreign ministers agenda “with the same resolution and success as last year in the El Salvador General Assembly and more recently at the Summit of the Americas”.
The US delegation to the OAS meeting will be headed by Roberta Jackson, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America and the US ambassador before OAS, Carmen Lomellin, plus the support from the US embassy in Bolivia.
State Department spokesperson William Ostick justified the absence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will miss the OAS general assembly, recalling that the meeting was originally scheduled for “next July” and this came “into conflict with a long before programmed trip to Europe in early June”.
Last March British PM David Cameron visited President Obama in the White House and revealed that the US was content with the status quo in the Falkland Islands and ‘would stop prodding Britain and Argentina’ to talk to each other.
“President Obama made clear that the US was content with the status quo, under which the Falklands remain a British overseas territory”, said PM Cameron.
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