Madrid, London to Discuss Solving Gibraltar Question

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 20, 2001

Madrid, London to Discuss Solving Gibraltar Question

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will meet Tuesday in Barcelona in an effort to solve the territorial dispute over Gibraltar.
Gibraltar is now the only British colony left on the European continent. Located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, it is a 5.5 square kilometers territory with 30,000 inhabitants.

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will meet Tuesday in Barcelona in an effort to solve the territorial dispute over Gibraltar.

The meeting follows that of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his British counterpart Tony Blair. They agreed ten days ago in London to provide new drive for the Gibraltar issue unsettled for nearly three centuries.

Gibraltar is now the only British colony left on the European continent. Located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, it is a 5.5 square kilometers territory with 30,000 inhabitants.

A British-Dutch force captured it in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

The Spainish-British dialogue on the issue began in 1961 and reached a landmark in 1984 when the so-called Brussels Process was set up at the European Union (EU) headquarters by the then Spanish and British foreign ministers, Fernando Moran and Geoffrey Howe.

British troops withdrew from the region in 1991.

Minister Pique said Monday in Brussels there was no reason to expect a lot from the coming diplomatic meeting because it was just the beginning of a process "that will take months".

Nevertheless, the Spanish senior diplomat said "this is the first formal meeting", and issues related to "both cooperation and sovereignty" were expected to be discussed at the Barcelona meeting.

Also on Monday, Pique again invited Gibraltar's Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, to join the talks. Caruana refuses to accept the conditions of such a bilateral meeting and has demanded participation as an equal under the same conditions as the governments of Madrid and London.

In another development, the former chief of the local government of Gibraltar, Joe Bossano, told a Spanish radio station that the "Spanish flag will not fly together with the British one, not within a year, nor within three hundred".

In declarations to radio "Onda Cero", Bossano insisted that the Gibraltar people "don't have it in our minds to let ourselves be re-conquered by Spain after three hundred years".

The Labor politician reiterated London's stance of not imposing any agreement on the Gibraltar people, but of taking the stand that "whatever is negotiated with Spain within the next 12 months, it will have to be accepted or rejected by the people through a referendum."