President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner delivered her fourth speech before the UN’s General Assembly and renewed the country’s claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, and threatened the UK with banning all stops from Chilean flights heading to Malvinas.
The head of State reaffirmed Argentina’s sovereignty to Malvinas, Georgia, and Southern Sandwich islands, and remarked that the UK “cannot claim sovereignty over a territory that’s 14,000 kilometres away from their land.”
Likewise, the President threatened to ban LAN-Chile airline’s flights from stopping in Río Gallegos in their way from Punta Arenas, Chile to Puerto Argentino in Malvinas.
Yesterday, the Head of State had met with businessmen from the Exxon Mobil Corporation and AES, who are due to respectively confirm oil exploration and energy investments in Argentina. The meeting generated high expectations as a recent report issued by the US Energy Department ranked Argentina as having the third-largest reserve of non-conventional gas in the world, behind the US and China.
The President is in company of Federal Planning Minister Julio de Vido, Legal and Technical Secretary Carlos Zannini, presidential spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro. Likewise, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and the Argentine ambassador before the UN, Jorge Argüello, were already in New York when Fernández de Kirchner arrived.
She is also expected to meet with her Chilean counterpart Sebastián Piñera to discuss the situation of the political refugees who are staying in each country: Sergio Galvarino Apablaza Guerra, a former leftist guerrilla leader who is accused of murdering a politician in Chile, and Argentine Judge Otilio Roque Romano, who fled last month to Chile facing charges of being connected to crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship.
Meanwhile, De Vido met yesterday with Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to “review the loan portfolio which the multilateral credit agency currently has with our country.” De Vido last night said that the joint investment of the companies will be 800 million dollars.