Courts and a Courtship

Fallout from the Falklands: arrests and a rapprochement

Smiling confidently, former President Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri strode into the town-house headquarters of Argentina's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in downtown Buenos Aires one morning last week and described his mood as "very good." By the time he left, night had fallen, and so had Galtieri's cheer. After nine hours of questioning by Argentina's highest military court, the army general who launched his country's disastrous 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands was under formal arrest. Galtieri was soon joined by the other members of the military junta who ruled Argentina during those inglorious days: former Navy Commander in Chief Jorge Isaac Anaya and Air Force Commander in Chief Basilio Lami Dozo. The trio of arrests gave a strong signal that Argentina's discredited armed forces were finally about to begin court-martial proceedings against their former superiors in connection with the Falklands debacle, a war that left 1,366 Argentines dead and ultimately inspired the country's return last year to civilian rule.

A day of reckoning for Galtieri & Co. has been slowly approaching since last November. At that time an official panel concluded that military trials were appropriate. The report suggested that Galtieri and Anaya be charged with failing to provide assistance to Argentine forces on the remote Falklands while British troops closed in. If found guilty of that offense, the pair may be given sentences of death or life imprisonment. Brigadier General Lami Dozo, whose spirited air defense against the British gave Argentina its only consolation in defeat, still faces the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence and dishonorable discharge.

As the military continued its protracted postmortem, Argentina's newly elected civilian President, Raul Alfonsin, was trying to revive a civil and useful relationship with Britain. For weeks Alfonsin's government and that of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have been exchanging messages through Brazilian and Swiss intermediaries regarding a partial rapprochement and resumption of peaceful negotiations over the future of the Falklands. In January the British offered to resume air services between the two countries, to restore trade and financial dealings that were frozen as a result of the war, and to return Argentine war dead and allow bereaved Argentine families to visit the Falklands.

Last week Alfonsin had some proposals of his own, most of them unacceptable to the British. Among them: an end to Britain's 150-mile exclusion zone around the islands, replacement of the Falklands garrison of some 4,300 British troops and workers by a U.N. force, and a halt to construction of a $319 million civilian-military Falklands airport. Neither side was budging on the bedrock issue: Argentina's claim to the Falklands and Britain's firm position that the islands have belonged to Britain without interruption since 1833, and that at the very least, the 1,800 Falkland Islands residents have the right to determine how they are to be ruled. Even so, the two governments were taking steps, however small, toward each other. And Alfonsin was continuing to clean house. qed