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  • Pain With Spain

    PAIN WITH SPAIN
    Michael Soltys

    Buenos Aires Herald, Argentina
    http://www.buenosairesherald.com/editori al/editorial_english.jsp?idContent=490343
    April 30 2008

    A seminar on "Women in the Alliance of Civilizations" sounds supremely
    abstract but somehow the Monday event contrived to become the focus
    of a cluster of problems with Spain, coinciding with the Spanish
    courts' refusal to extradite ex-president María Estela "Isabel"
    Martínez de Perón on the same day. The event itself suffered from
    various absences, including an extremely weak presence on the part
    of the Turkish co-sponsors of the "Alliance of Civilizations" series
    (perhaps hypersensitive over the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
    administration's love of the term "genocide" in general and its
    application to the Armenian massacres of 1915-23 in certain Argentine
    official resolutions in particular) and the absence of Spanish deputy
    premier María Teresa Fernández de la Vega (despite sharing both
    the gender and surname of her presidential host). Instead the reasons
    for the latter's absence became the issue and was used by President
    Cristina Kirchner to continue her domestic feud with the press in
    contempt of the international occasion -- the Spanish socialist was
    quoted as being affronted by the alleged misreporting of Clarín
    in giving as the reason for her suspension of the trip her presumed
    ire over the Argentine government's pressures to "Argentinize" the
    Spanish-owned Aerolíneas Argentinas.

    Yet this denial is belied by the concern over these pressures
    explicitly transmitted by Spanish Ambassador Rafael Estrella to
    Transport Secretary Ricardo Jaime and in any case Aerolíneas has
    some very serious problems quite irrespective of attendance at the
    "Women in the Alliance of Civilizations" seminar. With only half of
    its fleet in the air and interminable union problems, Aerolíneas
    is rapidly sliding back to its parlous state of 2002 when it was
    the object of what can only be called a privatization in reverse --
    i.e. the Argentine state paid the Spanish tourism company 700 million
    dollars to take charge of the airline after selling 90 percent of
    the shares for a single dollar. The current "Argentinization" (this
    clumsy term must be used because the government is not attempting any
    direct nationalization of the airline but rather an acquisition by
    crony capitalist interests) is flying in the face of world trends --
    do the Kirchners really want to take a leaf out of Silvio Berlusconi's
    book with his anachronistic bid to keep Alitalia national?

    Even if Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos dutifully
    painted the brightest picture of bilateral relations, Spanish
    concern extends not only to Aerolíneas but to all Spanish-owned
    utilities and their artificially low rates. And then there is the
    refusal to extradite Isabel Perón -- the Spanish courts not only
    seem unconvinced of the evidence of her direct links with the Triple
    A far right terrorist organization but also whether the Triple A
    qualified for state terrorism and hence crimes against humanity. The
    refusal to extradite Isabel Perón is less hostile than it seems and
    possibly even a favour to ex-president Néstor Kirchner since the
    return and trial of his predecessor would undoubtedly create rifts
    in the Peronist movement he is set to chair. The problems with Spain
    certainly should not be exaggerated but neither can they be ignored.

    --Boundary_(ID_a7VvALxom1N2DPyR94iNYg)--
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