The 300-year row between Spain and Britain over Gibraltar enters a new and different phase this week as talks begin with, for the first time, the Gibraltarians also sitting at the negotiating table.
Although the meeting is billed as talks about talks, the presence of Gibraltar’s chief minister, Peter Caruana, marks a radical change in the process of deciding what is to be done with the Rock.
A British Foreign Office spokesperson said Wednesday’s meeting at Chevening House in Kent would be to discuss the creation of a new forum for dialogue that would include the Gibraltarians.
”This forum would provide Gibraltar with its own distinct voice, and would have an open agenda … Future discussion over Gibraltar would take place through a three-sided dialogue rather than a bilateral negotiation,” he said.
Caruana’s presence has, however, aroused the suspicion of opposition groups on the Rock who have warned that they will be watching carefully to make sure he does not cede on the key issue of sovereignty.
Britain and Spain agreed two years ago that, in principle, they would be prepared to share sovereignty over the three-and-a-half square kilometres of promontory at the mouth of the Mediterranean.
That provoked the almost unanimous opposition of Gibraltarians. Caruana called a referendum in which 99% of the Rock’s voters said they did not want any form of shared sovereignty with their old enemy, Spain.
But with the change of government in Spain earlier this year, which saw José MarÃÂa Aznar’s tough-talking conservative People’s party replaced by José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero’s socialists, Madrid’s approach has changed radically.
The socialists have exchanged the stick for the carrot and made it clear that, while they do not intend to drop Spain’s historic claim to sovereignty, they want to woo the support of Gibraltarians.
The new government has, therefore, dropped Madrid’s traditional insistence that it can only deal directly with the British Foreign Office and invited Caruana to the table.
”That is not an easy thing for traditional Spanish diplomacy to digest,” Spain’s El Mundo newspaper warned last week.
”It is certainly the first time there has been a meeting like this in recent years,” a spokesperson for the British embassy in Madrid said.
A spokesperson for Caruana said he was looking forward to ”this long-awaited opportunity to try and establish a new process of dialogue on terms and for purposes acceptable to and safe for Gibraltar”.
But he denied accusations that he might be preparing to give way on sovereignty. ”The Gibraltar government’s position on sovereignty and the purpose of dialogue has been made clear and is clear.”
Opposition groups on the Rock have complained that the parameters of the talks have not been made clear.
”It appears that these are still in the air. We shall, therefore, follow developments closely,” opposition spokesperson Fabian Picardo told the Gibraltar Chronicle.
The British Foreign Office’s senior Europe diplomat, Dominick Chilcott, and his Spanish counterpart, José Pons, will also be at the meeting.
The three-way approach was agreed by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and his Spanish counterpart, Miguel Angel Moratinos, at a meeting in Madrid in October.
At that meeting they also agreed to try to drive through a new agreement that would allow for the Rock’s airport to be jointly used by both Spain and Gibraltar. That would help revitalise the economy of the Spanish towns near Gibraltar, while also increasing traffic at the airport.
Caruana has recently been negotiating a new Constitution for Gibraltar, to replace that written in 1969 with the British government.
While details of the talks remain confidential, Caruana has insisted that they are going well. – Guardian Unlimited Â