Papal mediation in the Beagle conflict
| Beagle conflict | |
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| Main Products: | Beagle conflict |
| 1881–1970: | Beagle cartography |
| 1958: | Snipe incident |
| 1971–1977: | Arbitration court in the Beagle conflict |
| 1977–1978: | Direct negotiations |
| 1978: | Operation Soberanía |
| 1979-1984: | Papal mediation |
| 1984: | Friendship treaty 1984 |
In 1971, Chile and Argentina agreed to submit the long-standing dispute over the belonging of the islands south of the Beagle Channel to an international tribunal.
On February 17, 1977, Queen Elizabeth II announced the verdict awarding the islands to Chile. Chile recognized the judgment and then defined its baselines (see Chilean baselines according to Decree 416 of June 14, 1977).
On January 25, 1978, the Argentine junta invalidated the verdict, bringing both countries to the brink of war.
Direct negotiations between the two countries could not stop the growing military tension on the 5000 km long border.
Two of the methods of resolving the conflict had thus proven impracticable: that of direct negotiations and that of the international tribunal. There was one last option to resolve the conflict peacefully: mediation.
In Buenos Aires on December 12, both foreign ministers appeared to have found a compromise to request the Pope's mediation, but the Argentine junta revoked its foreign minister that evening and ordered Operation Soberanía to begin on December 22, 1978.
A few hours before the Argentine attack, Pope John Paul II offered to mediate in the conflict on his own initiative and sent the Italian Cardinal Antonio Samorè as personal envoy to Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile . In addition to the threat of war, his envoy had to overcome other obstacles:
- Chile regarded the international judgment as a legal asset and had converted it into a Chilean law.
- Argentina did not recognize the judgment as a basis for negotiation.
- Argentina extended the conflict zone to all islands southeast of the Beagle Channel and laid claim to the Strait of Magellan .
The Vatican had two tasks to fulfill during the mediation: to banish the danger of war, to oblige both parties to refrain from using force and, secondly, to conduct the actual negotiations and adapt them to the new situations.
Demands and wishes of both countries
Argentina considered it necessary for economic and strategic interests to have free navigation rights in the canals around Tierra del Fuego in order to have access to the Pacific Ocean from Ushuaia . Ushuaia is the base of the Argentine fishing fleet and at the same time the port of departure for supplies to their Antarctic bases , but there was no connection to the Pacific Ocean because Chile claimed all the islands between Cape Horn and the Strait of Magellan (with the exception of the eastern side of Tierra del Fuego). The canals would therefore be Chilean inner waters. In this sense, Ushuaia was a port at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Beagle Channel.
The conflict zone jointly defined in the arbitration mandate in 1971 was a polygon (with the shape of a hammer), but after Argentina declared the unfavorable arbitration judgment null and void, it expanded the conflict zone to the south and required the Cape Horn meridian as the border to the Cape -Hoorn Island.
There were also other controversies that had been overlooked until then. Argentina saw the stretch from Punta Dungenes to Cabo Virgenes at the northeastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan as part of the Strait of Magellan and was therefore entitled to participate in the regulation of shipping. On the other hand, some military in Chile saw the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan, which belongs to Chile, as the legal basis for a Chilean projection onto the Atlantic Ocean.
A dispute also arose in the western mouth of the Strait of Magellan. Argentina claimed that the western estuary was a delta formed by the Abra, Barbara, Magdalena and Cockburn canals. They should be freely navigable as a result of the border treaty of 1881, which made the Strait of Magellan freely navigable for all ships. Chile contradicted this view, saw these canals as internal waters and drew its baselines accordingly.
As early as 1978 it was foreseeable that the (future) international law of the sea would grant the coastal regions valuable rights of use in the exclusive economic zone. In order to define the sea border, one looks for the line of points that are the same distance from the nearest beach in the respective country. At the southern tip of America, this maritime border could have negative consequences for Argentina in terms of its claims to the Antarctic and for Chile a large access in the South Atlantic.
A revision of the arbitration decision was also undesirable for Chile because its northern neighbors Peru and Bolivia were dissatisfied with the border treaties and could see a treaty change as a precedent .
That is, the problem was limited not only to the sovereignty of the islands, but to a complex of economic, strategic and political interests that also influenced the prestige of countries abroad.
Finding a mediator
At the beginning of November 1978 the direct negotiations between the two parties had finally failed and the Chilean Foreign Minister Hernán Cubillos suggested to his Argentinian colleague Carlos Washington Pastor that the dispute be referred to the International Court of Justice in The Hague . Since all Argentine legal arguments had previously been rejected by the jointly called tribunal, Argentina saw in this step only a new defeat in advance. It was later announced in Buenos Aires that Argentina would view such a move as Casus Belli .
As a last alternative before the war, the Chilean foreign minister suggested seeking mediation. This was accepted in principle by his colleague and it was agreed to meet in Buenos Aires on December 12, 1978.
Results were quickly achieved in this meeting. The Pope was agreed to act as mediator, but on the evening when the Chilean officials were preparing the document, the Argentine foreign minister called to inform the Chilean foreign minister that the junta in Buenos Aires had withdrawn its support for the mediation on the part of Jorge Videlas .
December 22, 1978 was the day Argentina wanted to occupy the islands militarily. That morning the Pope offered to mediate both governments directly and on his own initiative. He informed them that his personal envoy, Cardinal Antonio Samorè , was on his way with the Curia diplomat Faustino Sainz Muñoz for this mission.
The Pope, alarmed by the reports of the Catholic bishops and the interest of the United States , advocated mediation.
The characteristics of the intermediary
The long experience of the Vatican in handling diplomatic conflicts was of great help to Cardinal Samorè in bringing the negotiations to a good end. He took the time and patience to shed light on the problem:
- He divided the claims and problems of the parties apart.
- He left the subject of the Strait of Magellan aside.
- He left the Antarctic issue aside.
- He solved the problem created by the Argentine termination of the 1971 Judicial Resolution Treaty .
- He separated territorial claims to land from claims to maritime zones.
- Since the Vatican does not have to answer to any domestic political opposition, as in the case of a national state , the mediator could wait until the political situation (in Argentina) changed.
- The mediator conducted separate exploratory talks with the delegations, he asked them about their claims, arguments and possibilities to give in to their demands. There were seldom meetings with both parties (together).
The negotiations took place in the house of Pius IV , in the Vatican Gardens , built in the 17th century and which has housed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1922 .
The papal envoy maintained strict neutrality at all times. The then Chilean foreign minister, Hernán Cubillos, later claimed that although after the first meeting in Chile with the papal envoy no more relevant issues were discussed, Cardinal Samorè always held meetings of the same duration on both sides of the border.
Some Argentine groups asked the Pope to change their envoy because of an alleged preference for Chile.
The four phases of mediation
Mark Laudy distinguishes between four phases in mediation:
- From the arrival of the mediator in Buenos Aires on December 25, 1978, to the signing of the Acta de Montevideo on January 8, 1979. In this phase he had to avert the imminent war. After both parties had reached a compromise on the question of mediation (a mediation contract failed on December 12th), Samorè demanded from both sides a commitment to renounce violence and return to the military status quo of 1977.
- From May 1979, when both delegations arrived in Rome , to December 1980, when the Pope presented his first proposal for a solution.
- From early 1981 until Argentina returned to democracy. During this period the negotiations were fruitless.
- From the transfer of power to the democratically elected President Raúl Alfonsín to the signing of the Peace and Friendship Treaty in 1984.
The Montevideo Files
On January 8, 1979, in Montevideo ( Uruguay s) by both parties Act of Montevideo signed. This contract gives the agents a broad scope of action without geographical information or time restrictions.
Both parties pledged to renounce violence, to return to the military standard of 1977 and to avoid any measure that could tarnish the harmony between the two nations.
The Chilean delegation in Rome included:
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The Argentine delegation in Rome included:
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The 1980 papal proposal
On December 12, 1980, the Pope received both delegations to communicate his proposal to them. Both governments were due to respond by January 8, 1981. This proposal was prepared without the delegations' knowledge. The content of the proposal was to remain unknown to the public pending the approval of both parties, but in Argentina it was published in the newspaper La Nación on August 22, 1981 .
The proposal put all the islands in dispute in Chile, but intended to restrict the internal waters around the islands. Argentina received limited rights to certain installations (it was intended to operate joint weather and radar stations) on some islands and extended navigation rights in the zone around the islands. Most of the maritime zone was given to Argentina, but the rights to natural resources, scientific research and environmental management should be shared.
On December 25, 1980, despite reservations, Chile accepted the proposal.
Argentina never formally responded to the proposal. On March 25, 1981, two months after the deadline, Argentina expressed its dissatisfaction with the proposal in a note to the Vatican because no Argentine islands were planned and a deep Chilean presence in the South Atlantic was established.
Some observers suspect that Cardinal Samorè drafted the proposal in the belief that Argentina would agree to it on the basis of the information provided by the Argentine delegation. It is also possible that the proposal should soften the hawks in Buenos Aires for a later proposal.
In any case, the negotiations served to avert war, to strengthen stability in the region and to gain time before changes in the politics of one of the countries occurred.
The reign of Viola and Galtieri in Argentina
After the Argentine rejection of the first papal proposal, the situation became dangerous again.
From March 29, 1981 to December 11, 1981 Roberto Viola took power in Argentina, a rather moderate military on this issue, but he could not assert himself against the hawks in the armed forces.
Without consulting political power, the Argentine army arrested an alleged Chilean spy ring . In response, two alleged Argentine spies were arrested in Chile. On April 28, 1981 , the situation escalated when General Leopoldo Galtieri , Commander-in-Chief of the Army, again cordoned off the border with Chile without consulting the Presidential Office.
On December 22nd, Galtieri, one of the hawks within the Argentine armed forces , took power .
In January 1982, the new government on the Rio de la Plata terminated the treaty for the judicial resolution of controversies from 1971 (Spanish: Tratado de Solución Judicial de Controversias ). This treaty allowed both parties to unilaterally bring unresolved controversies before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. This last legal option was another card for Chile, militarily weaker than Argentina, because its legal arguments had been strengthened by the arbitration tribunal that had been called on jointly. However, that was only on a symbolic level. Argentina would have immediately seen a reason to start the war in this step. In practice, the termination meant fixing the last date for Chile's visit to the court at the end of 1982.
On February 19, 1982, six weeks before the start of the Falklands War , the tug ARA Gurruchaga of the Argentine Navy anchored off the island of Deceit for three days , despite Chilean protests and against the commitment entered into in the Montevideo Act to refrain from anything. which could affect the harmony between the nations.
All of these obstacles had to be removed or at least circumvented by the mediator in order not least to preserve the appearance of ongoing mediation. Indeed, the negotiations made no progress, partly because Chile was unwilling to make any further concessions than those of 1980, partly because the junta in Argentina was looking for great successes in foreign policy.
On April 2, 1982, the junta decided to take the Falkland Islands by military force . In Chile, the events of the Falklands War were viewed with concern.
After the Falklands War
The Argentine war debacle caused the fall of Galtieri and the rise of General Reynaldo Bignone (July 22, 1982). Bignone ruled only with the support of the army. The Air Force and the Navy withdrew from government. The weakness of this government, caused by the military defeat, the loss of prestige, the lack of support from the Navy and the Air Force, made any progress in the negotiations on the Beagle conflict impossible, with the exception of an extension of the Treaty of Judicial Resolution of Controversies of 1971 , agreed on September 15, 1982. This extension only concerned matters of papal mediation, which gave Chile the opportunity to refer to the International Court of Justice within six months of the end of the Pope's mediation.
Cardinal Antonio Samorè died on February 4, 1983 in Rome at the age of 77. Cardinal Agostino Casaroli , Secretary of State in the Vatican , was appointed as the new envoy . This higher position within the Vatican allowed Casaroli to exert greater pressure on the parties.
In July 1983, Santiago Benadaba, a member of the Chilean delegation in Rome, happened to meet the Argentine ambassador to the Netherlands , Julio Barbieri , while on a different trip in The Hague . In discussing the conflict, they found some common insights that they shared with their governments. They were each given the green light to pursue these agreements with the support of the mediator. The alternative was based on Argentina surrendering the islands and installations on the islands and Chile surrendering the full maritime rights that ownership of the island made possible.
The return to democracy in Argentina
On December 10, 1983, Raúl Alfonsín took power in Argentina. One of his main goals was the reintegration of Argentina into the international community. The new government was looking for an early solution to the Beagle conflict. This gave the negotiations a strong boost. The meetings between Ernesto Videla and Marcelo Delpech, heads of the Chilean and Argentine delegations, often took place in South America.
Based on proposals from both governments, Cardinal Casaroli announced a new proposal on June 11, 1984, not without first clarifying that a rejection of the proposal would result in the unsuccessful end of the mediation.
On November 29, 1984, Foreign Ministers Jaime del Valle for Chile and Dante Caputo for Argentina signed the compromise solution in Rome that would later become the friendship and peace treaty of 1984 between Chile and Argentina .
Key factors in the negotiations
Argentina's domestic policy was undoubtedly the decisive factor in the negotiations. The military who ruled Argentina had been divided into "hawks" and "doves" for most of the mediation, and they could neither agree on a common line, nor was one of the groups alone able to enforce its policy.
This situation changed after the defeat in the Falkland Islands and the subsequent return to democracy. Marcelo Delpech considered a solution to the conflict before Alfonsin took office as unlikely.
The choice of the mediator was optimal, because he achieved the maximum possible in this situation: avert the war through his authority and hold talks until the political situation in Argentina improves.
The mediator's patience, expecting no immediate political gain, and his moral authority prevented a war from starting after his first proposal was rejected.
literature
- Report and Decision of the Court of Arbitration . (PDF; 4.9 MB) Beagle Channel Arbitration between the Republic of Argentina and the Republic of Chile (English)
- Mark Laudy: The Vatican Mediation of the Beagle Channel Dispute: Crisis Intervention and Forum Building . ( Memento of May 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; English)
- Alejandro Luis Corbacho: Predicting the Probability of War During Brinkmanship Crises: The Beagle and the Malvinas Conflicts . Universidad del CEMA, Argentina, Documento de Trabajo No. 244, September 2003
- Karin Oellers-Frahm: The arbitration award in the Beagle Channel dispute . (PDF; 1.8 MB) Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Reports and certificates.
- Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile: Relaciones Chileno-Argentinas, La controversia del Beagle . Geneva 1979 (English / Spanish).
- Rubén Madrid Murúa: La Estrategia Nacional y Militar que planificó Argentina, en el marco de una estrategia total, para enfrentar el conflicto con Chile el año 1978 . (PDF) Memorial del Ejército de Chile, Edición Nº 471, Santiago, Chile, 2003 (Spanish).
- Andrea Wagner: The Argentine-Chilean conflict over the Beagle Channel. A contribution to the methods of peaceful dispute settlement . Publishing house Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, ISBN 3-631-43590-8 .
- Karl Hernekamp: The Argentine-Chilean border dispute on the Beagle Channel . Institute for Ibero-American Customers, Hamburg 1980.
- Annegret I. Haffa: Beagle Conflict and Falkland (Malwinen) War. On the foreign policy of the Argentine military government 1976–1983 . Weltforum Verlag, Munich / Cologne / London 1987, ISBN 3-8039-0348-3 .
- Isaac F. Rojas, Arturo Medrano: Argentina en el Atlántico Chile en el Pacífico . Nemont Publishing House, Buenos Aires 1979 (Spanish).
- Isaac F. Rojas, La Argentina en el Beagle y Atlántico sur 1st party . Editorial Diagraf, Buenos Aires (Spanish).
- Carlos Escudé, Andrés Cisneros: Historia general de las relaciones exteriores de la República Argentina . cema.edu.ar (Spanish).
- Fabio Vio Valdivieso: La mediación de su SS el Papa Juan Pablo II . Editorial Aconcagua, Santiago de Chile 1984 (Spanish).
- Alberto Marín Madrid: El arbitraje del Beagle y la actitud argentina . Editorial Moisés Garrido Urrea, 1984, id = A-1374-84 XIII (Spanish).
- Luis Alberto Romero: Argentina in the twentieth Century . Translated by James P. Brennan. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-271-02191-8 (English).
- Divisional General (retired) Juan E. Gugliamelli: Cuestión del Beagle. Negociación directa o diálogo de armas (Spanish). (The book is a compilation of several articles on the Beagle conflict that appeared in the magazine Estrategia , Buenos Aires No. 49/50, enero-febrero 1978. The title of the book is, in German, The Beagle Question, direct negotiations or Dialogue of Arms .)
- General Martín Antonio Balza and Mariano Grondona: Dejo Constancia: memorias de un general argentino . Editorial Planeta, Buenos Aires 2001, ISBN 950-49-0813-6 (Spanish).
- Francisco Bulnes Serrano and Patricia Arancibia Clavel: La Escuadra En Acción . Editorial Grijalbo, 2004, ISBN 956-258-211-6 (Spanish).
Web links
- Special edition of El Mercurio de Santiago de Chile , September 2, 2005 (Spanish). It contains interviews with Ernesto Videla, Jaime Del Valle, Helmut Brunner, Marcelo Delpech and Luciano Benjamín Menéndez.
- Interview with the Argentine general Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, commandant of the III Cuerpo del Ejercito. In: El Mercurio de Santiago de Chile , from an interview for the Argentine magazine Somos (Spanish).
- Interview with Pío Laghi, Apostolic Nuncio in Argentina, 1978. In: Clarín , Buenos Aires, December 20, 1998.
- Interview with the then US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Raúl Héctor Castro. In: Clarín , Buenos Aires, December 20, 1998 (Spanish).
- Historia de la santa mediación . In: Clarín , Buenos Aires, December 20, 1998 (Spanish).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Decree 416 of June 14, 1977
- ↑ Hernán Cubillos in the Spanish language Wikipedia
- ^ Carlos Washington Pastor in the Spanish language Wikipedia
- ↑ Interview with Ernesto Videla in: El Mercurio de Santiago .
- ↑ See Clarín newspaper of December 20, 1998
- ↑ a b Mark Laudy: The Vatican Mediation of the Beagle Channel Dispute: Crisis Intervention and Forum Building ( Memento from May 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
- ↑ Act of Montevideo (PDF; 67 kB)
- ↑ a b c d See article Pedro Daza Valenzuela in gobernabilidad.cl ( Memento of February 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b See Pasion de Servicio: Julio Philippi Izquierdo . In: René Millar Carvacho: cepchile.cl ( Memento from February 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 54 kB)
- ↑ a b See book by Enrique Bernstein Carabantes Recuerdos de un diplomático , Vol. 4, pág. 65
- ↑ a b Eduardo Rodríguez Guarachi: Chile-Argentina, más allá de sus fronteras: Crónicas de un diplomático . RIL Editores, 2004, ISBN 956-284-389-0 , p. 102
- ↑ Las relaciones con Chile , Nota 46. ( Memento from June 29, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) CEMA
- ↑ See Diario Clarín de Buenos Aires del 20 de diciembre de 1998: “'Me calenté' se justificó Galtieri ante el fastidiado comandante de la Marina, almirante Lambruschini, quien le preguntó: 'Pero se da usted cuenta que el país se encuentra así envuelto en una peligrosa escalada? '” (Translation: “ ' My horses ran away ', Galtieri justified himself to the angry naval chief Admiral Lambruschini, who had asked:' Are you aware that this is driving the country into a dangerous escalation? ' " )
- ↑ Argentina denuncia elertrado con Chile sobre el Beagle . In: El País , January 23, 1982
- ↑ David Rock: Argentina. 1536-1982, From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War . LBTauris, ISBN 1-85043-013-6 . P. 374: In late January 1982 Argentina mounted a new campaign against Chile over the Beagle Channel. ... For if the regime escalated the tension with Chile, it risked a protracted war that could spread elsewhere in Latin America, ... By comparison, action in the Falklands was "the easiest war of all."
- ↑ convicción Buenos Aires, February 24, 1982, pp 12/13. (Quoted in Historia general de las Relaciones Exteriores Argentinas ( Memento from June 29, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), note 57.)
- ↑ See Kalevi Holsti : The State, War, and the State of War . Cambridge Studies in International Relations, 1996, ISBN 0-521-57790-X , also books.google.de - On page 160: Displaying the mentality of the Argentine military regime in the 1970s, as another example, there was “Plan Rosario” according to which Argentina would attack the Falkland Islands and then turn to settle the Beagle Channel problem by force. The sequence, according to the plan, could also be reversed.