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The story behind the 'English ship' mentioned in a leaked audio in Chile, in which they criticize Bielsa and talk about Cafiero

2023-01-28T13:39:54.710Z


In the audio in which Gabriel Boric's chancellor treats the ambassador as a 'fool' and they plan a strategy to reprimand him, there is talk of a military ship based in the Malvinas Islands.


"I am going to tell Bielsa that I remind

him about the English ship

. That is indeed a gesture," says the Chilean secretary general for foreign policy, Alex Wetzig, in one of the passages of

a leaked chat

in the neighboring country and that has been the reason for a

political storm

for Foreign Minister Antonia Urrejola.

This audio, in addition to revealing a strategy by Gabriel Boric's minister to

challenge the Argentine ambassador

in Santiago, also shows the way in which they planned to simulate the harshness with which they presented the case to Minister Santiago Cafiero.

In those audios, Urrejola even calls Bielsa "huevón", which in Chile is like "boludo", and his officials have criticisms of others from the trans-Andean government.

The leaked conversation finds Urrejola's team designing the strategy of how to reprimand Rafael Bielsa because, on January 19,

he had complained

to the Foreign Relations Committee of the Chilean Senate that the Boric government had not anticipated that they were going to cancel the Dominga mining project, which involved direct communication with the Agua Negra pass, in San Juan, Argentina.

But in Argentina, what also rang out was the "English ship."

Bielsa was summoned to the Foreign Ministry last week and reprimanded by Wetzig.

Urrejola spoke of him in harsh terms with Cafiero.

But the dissemination of the audio content changed the meaning of what happened and it was Wetzig who went to apologize in person to Bielsa, who even so has starred in other controversies in Chile, with the Boric government, as with Sebastián Piñera's.


The UK's HMS Forth and Chile's relationship with the UK

The British Royal Navy ship is of deep interest to Argentina, and this article reproduces the part of the audio that mentions the ship, which is

related to the sovereignty conflict over the Malvinas

, and which, surely, is not it pleases the British government.

The comment refers

 to a request from the Argentine Foreign Ministry to the Chilean one so that the HMS Forth of Great Britain is not allowed to participate in Exponaval 2022,

which took place in Chilean Pacific waters at the end of last year.

A request that the

Boric government accepted

.

And now it awakens another type of controversy in Chile.

This newspaper was able to reconstruct what was discussed, what was the ship, the agreement and the story.

One part was confirmed by the Argentine government.

Much of it was published this Friday by the Chilean newspaper

Latest News

.

In the leaked audio Wetzig is heard mentioning "the English ship", to which the director of Planning, Andrés Villar, tells him:

"But he is going to tell you that this is in the agreement we signed." 

Wetzig:

No, no, no.

Villar:

I'm telling you what he's going to argue with you.

Carola Muñoz

(Urrejola's chief of staff and strong hand of the current Chilean Foreign Ministry) threatens: "The agreements, just as they are signed, can be dropped."

"Chile had a request from the United Kingdom for a British ship to have maintenance services in a Chilean shipyard. The Chilean government decided to accept our request to comply with their commitment not to provide logistics to British military vessels or aircraft with seats or destination to the Malvinas. It is a commitment assumed in the regional spheres (Mercosur and Unasur) that have always respected it," an Argentine government source told Clarín.

The official said the episode occurred between October and November.

He did not specify further details.

But this is part of the old claim of Kircherism so that neither planes nor British military ships are assisted by neighboring countries on their journey to the Malvinas, and as part of the claim to sovereignty.

However,

Últimas Noticias

reported that said ship installed in the Malvinas in 2020, and which has already led to protests by the Government of Alberto Fernández, who did not want it on the islands, was going to be part of the exhibition of the Chilean navy Exponaval 2022 and

was Bielsa who asked that he not be allowed to participate in an activity where there were other military ships from other countries not questioned by Argentina.

This, like other ships, is resupplied in Punta Arenas, never on the Argentine side, due to the Malvinas conflict, and sometimes requires technical-mechanical assistance.

Also HMS Forth.


Then,

Últimas Noticias

reports , last November the Chilean authorities "yielded to Bielsa's requests and

disavowed the ship when everything was already planned."

But the leak of the audio that reveals this gesture has bothered Chileans, and surely the British.

Juan Pablo Toro, executive director of AthenaLab, which does international consulting, said that "

Argentines should be rather happy with us for the gesture that was made with HMS Forth

", which replaced HMS Clyde in the Malvinas.

"For me it is

nonsense

because we have four British-made ships, the foundation of the national Navy was through Lord Cochrane and our relationship with the United Kingdom is celebrating 200 years," Toro complained.

The Argentina-Chile relationship

To tell the truth, between Chile and Argentina the support of the dictator Augusto Pinochet for the United Kingdom was always present during the war for the archipelago in 1982.

The trans-Andean democratic governments have always supported the claim of sovereignty, but the diplomatic relations they have with London are very close and even more so the military one.

Only last year, the Chilean Air Force received from Great Britain two Boeing E-3D Sentry Mk 1, while

Argentina suffers the consequences of the embargo on the purchase of arms

and equipment that have British components.

And on several occasions, the Government has protested the presence of British military ships in Chile, and complains to Brazil and Uruguay when planes from the Royal Forces of the United Kingdom land at their airports.

It is a policy that sometimes has an effect, other times not. 

Toro told Ultimas Noticias that the Deputy Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, Second Sea Lord Martin Connell, was at Exponaval 2022.

Originally, he should have shown HMS Forth to visitors to the exhibition dealing with "The Implications of Being a Maritime Power".

At the request of the Argentine government, transmitted by Bielsa, this did not happen.

Other sources consulted by

Clarín

 recalled that the conflict over the continental shelf between Argentina and Chile has also exposed other pending problems.

Like the Chilean position in favor of "free navigation" at the time of Argentine claims to make it difficult for British ships to pass through the extreme South Atlantic, close to the disputed area.

NE

look too

The Government of Chile apologized to Rafael Bielsa for the insults in a leaked audio

Scandal in Chile over a leaked audio in which Boric's chancellor criticizes Rafael Bielsa and talks about Santiago Cafiero

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-01-28

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