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Argentina president says West seeking to destabilize Latin America

Sunday, 12 April 2015 4:57 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 12 April 2015 4:56 AM ]

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner © AFP

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has slammed the West's “soft” campaign to destabilize Latin American countries.

During her address at the 35-nation Summit of the Americas in Panama City on Saturday, she said the attempts always originate in some NGOs that “we never know who finance them.”

She warned that the destructive attempts “aim at the destabilization of governments in the region, of the governments that have done the most for equality, for education and social inclusion.”

Pointing to the “major accomplishments” of the Latin American governments in the areas of human rights, social inclusion, health, and education, Kirchner said the West lends support to “governments with neoliberal policies that shattered people.”

She also denounced the Western attempts to combat “governments that can show their credentials of having been the ones that have included their countrymen the most.”

Elsewhere in her remarks, the Argentine president criticized the UK for considering her nation a “threat” and thus justifying an increase in its military presence in the Malvinas Islands, known as the Falklands to the British.

“The United Kingdom declared my country a threat to its won territory, the Malvinas Islands: 2.3 percent of UK’s budget is allocated to defense. It is also absurd,” she added.

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (R) attends a ceremony to honor the soldiers who died in the conflict between Britain and Argentina, during the commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the 1982 Malvinas War, in Ushuaia, April 2, 2015. © AFP

Britain declared Malvinas as part of its overseas territories in 1833. Argentina calls it an occupation and has time and again challenged the British military presence in the archipelago, which is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Argentina’s coast.

Row over the islands turned into a bloody war in 1982. The conflict then claimed the lives of 649 Argentine soldiers, 255 Britons and three islanders.

Tensions between Argentina and the UK mounted again in 2013, after a London-backed referendum asking the islanders to decide whether to remain under the British rule. Some 99.8 percent people voted to remain a British territory. The Argentine government challenged the vote calling it “a British maneuver lacking legal value”.

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