Word: thatchers
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...worthy as U.S. mediation might seem, the risks are enormous. There is a danger of lasting damage to the uniquely intimate U.S. relationship with Britain, Washington's closest ally. Though Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government expressed understanding of the U.S. desire to maintain neutrality while trying to mediate the conflict, unofficial voices were asking: Where are the Americans, now that we need them? Warned the Economist, a prestigious and firmly pro-American British weekly: "Have-it-both-ways irresolution on the part of the United States will lose British popular support for America's nuclear policies...
...Thatcher reiterated her firm position at an emergency session of Parliament. As it turned out, there was little debate-and virtually unanimous support for the government's policy. The negotiations, she told a cheering House of Commons, are "complex, changing and difficult, the more so because they are taking place between a military junta and a democratic government of a free people-one which is not prepared to compromise that democracy and that liberty which the British Falkland Islanders regard as their birthright." The British government would continue to listen to plans that might break the deadlock...
...statement was a thinly disguised promise to fire on any Argentine ships inside the 200-mile limit. Later, Thatcher increased the pressure by ordering a second, smaller flotilla to leave for the Falklands. Along with support vessels, the new force included the Atlantic Conveyor, an 18,000-ton container ship modified to carry 18 Harrier jump jets, and the newly recommissioned H.M.S. Intrepid, an amphibious assault vessel capable of carrying as many as 700 troops, eight landing craft and five helicopters. In addition, the government requisitioned the cruise liner Uganda, which last week disembarked 1,295 vacationing passengers in Naples...
Grumbled Denis Healey, the Labor Par ty's shadow Foreign Secretary: "The time has come when we must tell the U.S. that the attitude of an evenhanded broker is not quite enough." In contrast, Prime Minister Thatcher and her ministers last week accepted the fact that Haig had to take a public stance of neutrality, but the British government made it clear to the Secretary that it would expect the U.S. to change its posture if his mediating talks failed; the U.S. would be expected to join in the European trade and economic sanctions against Argentina. Warned a British...
Seeking to quiet those fears, the Ad ministration reportedly assured the Thatcher government that it would side with the British if all prospects of talks with the Argentines broke down. Meanwhile, Haig was not yet ready to give up his efforts to find a way out of a developing crisis between two nations both convinced they are right on a matter of honor and principle. - By John Nielsen. Reported by Frank Melville/London and Gavin Scott/Buenos Aires