Malvinas: Peru throws London a line

By Carolina Barros

Herald Staff

The Malvinas cause has just taken its first casualty. Its name is Peru, which has chosen to go it alone and create a chink in the hitherto solid armour of Unasur countries backing the Argentine claim to the islands. And what did Peru do? Has cracked that seamless regional front when authorizing the British frigate HMS Montrose (with its 183-strong crew, ten cannons, A Lynx chopper etc ) to pay a protocol visit to the Lima port of Callao as from this coming Thursday until Monday (March 26).

In other circumstances, the visit of the Montrose would have been overlooked as the blandest of sideshows (the Peruvian Navy has participated in several joint manoeuvres with the Royal Navy) but amid the war of words over the Malvinas between Argentina and the United Kingdom, the prospect of this Type 23 frigate mooring in Peru’s main port takes on a special meaning. 

Firstly, because as from late 2011 the Montrose patrols the South Atlantic between the Malvinas, South Sandwich and South Georgia islands (Atlantic Patrol Task South, APTS). Even if it was a case of “mission accomplished” when in late January London announced that it would be replaced by a more potent vessel — the ultra-modern Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless now en route to the islands —, the Montrose is not unknown to Unasur members.

Statement

So much so that it was the motive of a special statement at the end of the Unasur summit of heads of state and foreign ministers in Asunción late last October. “In the light of the communiqué issued by British military forces respecting the dispatch of the frigate HMS Montrose to the South Atlantic for a period of six months ... (we) reiterate the rejection of the British military presence in the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich islands and surrounding maritime spaces,” said the document signed by all the region’s foreign ministers, including Peru’s Rafael Roncagliolo. 

Curiously enough, the same Unasur foreign ministers met two days ago in exactly the same venue (Asunción) to debate, among other issues, the Malvinas yet again. “The military presence of the United Kingdom and the surrounding maritime spaces is contrary to a regional policy in accordance with seeking a peaceful solution” was the joint pronouncement on Saturday (March 17).

This time the Montrose was not included in the statement, despite Héctor Timerman’s plea to Lima to “disinvite” the British sailors, but the resounding “no” of Torre Tagle (the Peruvian Foreign Ministry) is another bead in the rosary of the frustrations of the Argentine minister, whose diplomatic quest for the Malvinas has taken him as far as Azerbaijan, Mozambique and Angola in search of fresh support. 

That urbi et orbi crusade might have distracted him from keeping an eye on the region.

Coincidences

Although another aspect of the Peruvian invitation to the British warship cuts deeper — the timing. The Montrose will be arriving in Callao just a few days after Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne, on a swing through Chile (where he was unable to see President Sebastián Piñera), Colombia (where he was granted an audience by President Juan Manuel Santos) and Peru. The Lima encounter between the senior British official and President Ollanta Humala not only gave rise to a “Memorandum of understanding on industrial co-operation in defence matters,” signed at the end of September between both countries, but also an invitation to the Peruvian leader to visit London in April, the month commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Malvinas conflict. A huge commitment. 

But the cruellest timing beyond doubt comes from Ollanta Humala. On February 8 the Peruvian sent a personal letter to President Cristina Kirchner (the only expression of solidarity to enjoy the rare privilege of being uploaded onto the Casa Rosada website).

“My government backs the Argentine aspiration to achieve a peaceful understanding with the United Kingdom via dialogue and negotiation — in this sense we share your concern over the increased military presence on the islands,” read the letter. 

Denials

One week later on February 15 Peru’s Executive Branch sent a draft legislative resolution (817-2011-PE) to the Defence Committee of Congress asking for approval of the “protocol visit” of the Montrose to Callao (the vessel whose South Atlantic patrolling had triggered Humala’s letter to CFK about the “military presence on the islands”). The request was unanimously approved in a February 27 vote and published in El Peruano (Peru’s Official Gazette) on the 29th.

Despite that publication, the response to inquiries by this reporter both in Argentina and Peruvian diplomatic circles was flat denial that the Montrose would be calling at the port of Callao since the journey “had been suspended.” This reached the stage that last week (when Browne was touring Chile, Colombia and Peru, while at the same time CFK was visiting the Chilean capital of Santiago) the on-line publication of El Peruano corresponding to the day February 29 vanished from the web. 

Meanwhile international merchant shipping sources tipped the Herald that while President Cristina Kirchner was dining on Thursday night with President Piñera in Santiago, the frigate Montrose was starting to circumnavigate the Straits of Magellan. At noon on Friday it was the British government which confirmed to the Herald that the ship was sailing to Callao and that “the government of Peru has not communicated to us any change” regarding this visit.

Even if there could be residual doubts about the procedure of the governments of both Peru (which allegedly “disappeared” website information) and Argentina (which spun out and even denied the topic of the Montrose to prevent it from interfering with Cristina’s visit to Chile), there is some certainty in all this — the Peru of Ollanta Humala has opted to move closer to Britain at a time when the region is displaying support for Argentina’s Malvinas claims. 

Motives

The explanation? Peruvian pundits in Lima point to three motives. The first is economic — Peru, after several years of real growth (8.8 percent in 2010, 7.5 percent in 2011), can allow itself the luxury of seeking new trade partners such as Britain.

The second — Humala has purged his Cabinet of leftist elements (almost the only survivor is Foreign Minister Rocangliolo, who, according to speculations in Lima, is hanging by a thread) and is leaning towards more commercial regional alliances such as the Pacific Arch (Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile) rather than the purely ideological (until now) such as Unasur. 

Thirdly — Humala is an ex-soldier who has not forgotten that Argentina repaid Peru’s wartime support for Argentina in the 1982 conflict with gun-running to Ecuador during its 1995 border war with Peru.

Perhaps for such reasons the former Peruvian foreign minister José Antonio García Belaunde (2006-2011) was not so far off the mark when he said that should there be another Malvinas war, Lima would not support Buenos Aires again. Perhaps also, and more than ever in this verbal and rhetorical conflict over the Malvinas, it fulfils Lord Ponsonby’s famous maxim: “Truth is the first casualty of war.”