More than 2,000 invitations have been issued around the world to next week’s ceremonial funeral with military honors in London for Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who died Monday at age 87. But Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, did not make the list.
Breaking the silence of Argentina’s government since her death, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman called the lack of an invitation “yet another provocation.” Mrs. Thatcher oversaw Britain’s victory in a 74-day war in 1982 over the Falklands, a sparsely-populated South Atlantic archipelago that Argentina calls the Malvinas. “What do I care if I’m not invited to a place where I didn’t think of going?” Mr. Timerman added in comments broadcast on Argentine radio on Thursday. “The woman died. Let her family mourn in peace,” he said, while also dismissing a proposal floated in London to rename Port Stanley, the Falklands capital, Port Margaret.
“What does it matter if they want to name it Port Margaret, Margarita or Margarona?” he asked. “Argentina and the United Nations don’t recognize it.”
Notable world leaders and diplomats invited to the funeral include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, and the mere appearance of a snub adds to the tension that has festered for three decades since the Falklands war, in which 649 Argentine and 255 British service members were killed, as well as 3 civilians on the islands.
Mrs. Thatcher’s ceremonial funeral, whose dress code is black waistcoats, black ties and “full day ceremonial without swords,” is different from a state funeral hewing to stricter rules of protocol. The organizing committee for the funeral appeared ready to ease some of the tension over the lack of an invitation for Mrs. Kirchner, with the news media in Britain reporting on Thursday that an invitation had been extended to Argentina’s ambassador to Britain, Alicia Castro.
Still, Argentina and Britain remain far apart on the Falklands, where in a March referendum voters cast ballots overwhelmingly in favor of remaining a British overseas territory.
“English, get out of Malvinas,” is a phrase commonly found in the graffiti around Buenos Aires. At political rallies and some soccer matches, flags bear images of the islands with the colors of the Argentine flag. On the 31st anniversary of the war, on April 2, nationalist organizations had planned a march on the British Embassy in Buenos Aires, which was canceled because of fatal flooding.
While Argentina’s government stayed quiet over Mrs. Thatcher’s death until the issue of the funeral emerged, pro-Kirchner news media in the country did not. The morning after her death, the newspaper Página 12 summed up its stance on its front page next to a photo of Mrs. Thatcher.
“Galtieri awaits her in hell,” read the headline, a reference to Leopoldo Galtieri, the military dictator who took Argentina to war over the Falklands and died in 2003. After the war, Argentina’s military junta collapsed.
Jonathan Gilbert contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
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