Frigate Libertad:
Clarin: “Plan of escape in Ghana: the unusual attempt by the Frigate Libertad to flee”
Clarin: “The Frigate Scandal: the Navy distances itself from the decision to stop in Ghana”
Clarin: “Making a stop in Ghana, an instruction given by Moreno”
La Nacion: “The government will turn to international courts to recover the Frigate Libertad”
La Nacion: “Sparks between Defense and Foreign Ministry over the Frigate”
Perfil: “The Navy is analyzing the evacuation of the Frigate Libertad”
MercoPress: “Argentina trusts in a ‘political solution’ with Ghana to release ARA Libertad”
The Wall Street Journal: “Argentine Lobby Mystifies ‘Members’”
Al Jazeera: “Chile envoy in Ghana over held Argentina ship”
Buenos Aires Herald: “Argentina willing to take Ghana ship seizure to ‘international courts’”
Ghana Web: “Ghanaian court erred in vessel judgment-Argentina”
The Wall Street Journal: “Court Throws Out Argentina…as Its Naval Ship Remains at Tema Port”
Radio Netherlands Worldwide: “Chile sends envoy to Ghana over seized Argentina ship”
Times of Malta: “Argentine mission to seek release of seized warship”
The Wall Street Journal: “Chasing Deadbeat Argentina”
Clarin
Plan of escape in Ghana: the unusual attempt by the Frigate Libertad to flee
Sunday, October 12, 2012
By Nicolas Winaski
While it is a ship that for a half century has been used to surviving adventures on the aquatic side of the world, the Frigate Libertad went through an unusual internal fervor this week. Detained by court order in the port of Tema, Ghana, the teaching vessel of the Navy was at the point of initiating an audacious escape maneuver.
The command of the ship communicated its secret strategy to the sailors on Tuesday, according to what Clarin could find out from naval sources involved with this action.
The plan was aborted at the last minute. Most of the crew was not sure of its success but they were still ready to follow orders from their superiors.
The time of escape had been set for the early hours of Wednesday, when the wine-colored waters of Tema are dark and free of maritime traffic.
The Frigate Libertad was detained twelve days ago in Ghana by order of the Superior Court of Commerce of that country, which ruled in favor of a request to attach the ship from NML, a vulture fund that is demanding payment from Argentina on bonds in default.
The story revives in a modern tone the old stalking of classic pirate days.
The Frigate Libertad is seeking to escape the claws of a vulture fund with headquarters in the Cayman Islands, the old territory of privates and pirates, professionals of crime on the high seas.
Clarín reported on Friday that some sailors on the symbolic ship of the Navy had told their families of escape plans via text message: “My love. Evil secret!!!!! TELL NO ONE ... we are preparing everything to escape but I don’t know when! It seems like today. Tell nobody! I’m only telling you! I love you,” wrote a crew member to his fiancee.
Until the detention of the Frigate Libertad reached critical mass in the media, the commanders of the ship only met with the full crew to pass on news. With the passage of time in Ghana, those meetings have become smaller, among the different “divisions” that make up the ship. Today secrecy is greater.
The Frigate Libertad is a slow moving ship capable of a speed of 13.8 knots, a little more than 24 km per hour.
It’s unauthorized departure from the port of Tema would be a complex and difficult action. Even smaller ships would be faster and could have easily stopped the ship.
Untying the Frigate would have been an uprising against the sentence issued by the Ghana court. A certain scandal.
The AFP news agency stated in a wire story that a hydrographic researcher from Ghana, Ramadan Adjin Tettey, said that a successful escape by the Argentine ship would have been a heroic feat.
Ships that leave the port of Tema do so under guide of native ships because they are the only ones capable of spotting the invisible navigable channels of those African waters.
Clarin
The Frigate Scandal: the Navy distances itself from the decision to stop in Ghana
Sunday, October 14, 2012
By Maria Eugenia Duffard
Thirteen days since the attachment of the Frigate Libertad in Ghana over a complaint from the so-called vulture funds, the authorities of the Argentine navy denied being responsible for the changes in the route of the trip that allowed the speculative investment funds to advance on the teaching vessel and said that it was an “inter-ministerial decision.” The clarification from the naval authorities comes after the issuing of an internal note from the Navy to the Defense Ministry, where it reported on the change from a Nigerian port to the one in Ghana.
The response from the Navy authorities adds to the variety of crossing accusations between officials at the Foreign Ministry, Commerce and Defense over the scandal of the Frigate that came out of the government of President Cristina Kirchner last week.
The Frigate had left Buenos Aires on June 2 and should return on December 8. While the initial itinerary didn’t stipulate a stop in the port of Tema at the city of Accra, the capital of Ghana, but one in Lagos, Nigeria, a change made official on May 14 carried the Frigate to that African port, where it’s been held since October 2. Reporter Horacio Verbitsky, who frequently reflects the positions of the Security Ministry and one sector of the government, published a copy of note N° 34/12, signed by then-director of General Organization and Doctrine of the Navy, Alfredo Mario Blanco, in which it reports that “for operative reasons the itinerary of the instructional voyage has been modified.” Verbitsky detached Foreign Minister Hector Timerman from the matter and charged against Defense Minister Arturo Puricelli, and against the Navy.
But yesterday, the Secretary General of the Argentine Armada, Rear Admiral Luis María González Day, denied that the change in route had been unilaterally taken by Navy authorities and in statements to radio El Mundo he said: “There is a totally logical sequence in the designation of the ports and of the Frigate’s final passages, and that whole sequence is a cooperative, inter-ministerial process, which is to say there are a series of back and forth communications to put together the trip that the Frigate Libertad then took.”
The vice president of the Argentine Naval League, Fernando Morales, said that the detention of the teaching ship in an African port is “an unprecedented incident” for the naval world.
Be that as it may, it’s clear than neither the Foreign Ministry authorities nor those from Defense were unaware of the route that the Frigate would follow nor the risks that came with docking in ports from non UNASUR countries, where any economic demand against Argentina is dismissed. As Clarin reported yesterday, the new itinerary had been designed by the Foreign Ministry and offered to Defense. However, those in the Foreign Ministry say it was officials from the office of the Secretary of International Economic Relations, led by Cecilia Nahon, under orders from Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, who came up with the idea of stopping in African ports. In addition to Ghana, the ship’s route included ports in the capitals of Senegal, Angola, Namibia and Cape Town.
Despite these explanations given by officials close to Timerman, Verbitsky yesterday set out against Puricelli – who is an enemy of Security (and ex-Defense) Minister Nilde Garre – and accused him of leaving the Navy to agree to its “new independence” and try to shed his responsibility in the attachment of the Frigate with “a common press operation.”
At the close of this edition, neither officials of Defense nor the Foreign Ministry had offered an official explanation of what happened with the Frigate. Only the document signed by Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino, who was leading the Argentine delegation to the Annual Meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Tokyo, alluded to the Frigate by charging against the vulture funds who asked for the attachment of the Frigate over a default on debt bond payments. “Argentina is facing an extraordinary and at times ridiculous challenge dealing with the creditors called the vulture funds …” Lorenzino said yesterday.
As such, the ship remains stranded in Ghana with 289 crew members, 36 guests on board, and a daily port cost of US$50,000. The government sent a mission to that country led by the vice ministers of Defense, Alfredo Forti, and Foreign Relations, Eduardo Zuain. The variety show promises to continue.
Clarin
Making a stop in Ghana, an instruction given by Moreno
Sunday, October 14, 2012
by Natasha Niebiskikwiat
The Frigate Libertad was making its first trip to Africa in its almost half-century of navigation when on October 2 it was surprised by the Ghana courts with a request for attachment by a speculative investment fund that is demanding unpaid debt from Argentina. The route had been designed and offered to the Defense Ministry by the Foreign Ministry. Ministers Arturo Puricelli and Hector Timerman accepted it, while experts at the Foreign Ministry had already warned by internal memo of the danger that could come from this route for an Argentine state asset, especially when there is no embassy present, like the case of Ghana.
But the ministers decided to go ahead, while the authors of the idea were officials from the trade area, the presidential priority: the secretary of International Economic Relations from the Foreign Ministry, Cecelia Nahon, and Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno.
Moreno had laid the cornerstone on the African continent with the trip to Angola which led to a tour by Cristina Fernandez. This way, with the idea of incorporating South-South cooperation, and cultural exchange with Africa, the emblematic ship from the Navy left on June 2 incorporating new ports: Casablanca (Morocco); Dakar (Senegal); Tema (Ghana); Luanda (Angola); Walvis Bay (Namibia); Cape Town (South Africa). They should have been returning to Buenos Aires on December 8. Today it’s been detained for 12 day by Ghanaian justice in the port of Tema, at a port cost of US$50,000 per day, without counting the pay to the soldiers that defend Argentina.
The Foreign Ministry was a hotbed yesterday. Both ministers decided to also toss off the weight of the political negotiation to those who carry out its management day to day: vice ministers Eduardo Zuain and Alfredo Forti, who traveled to Accra and Tema.
The Moreno style has been imposed on the Foreign Ministry.
Officials are living through a panic. Recently, the mistreatment of Nahon to one of her advisors ended up in scandal.
Nahón had asked that they advise her when Cristina was speaking before the UN. Someone forgot and Nahon called her secretary to the office where ten ambassadors and officials were present. The speech had begun and Nahon exploded: “I’m fed up with your friends, they scratch themselves all day!” No one stepped in. The secretary retired to the infirmary, and after the scandal Nahon ended up repeatedly apologizing. The daughter of the secretary went to high school with Florencia Kirchner.
La Nacion
The government will turn to international courts to recover the Frigate Libertad
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The Argentine government will appear in international courts of justice to recover the Frigate Libertad, the teaching vessel of the Navy held for 12 days in Ghana over a claim from a group of investors that didn’t join the debt swap.
The head of the White Helmets Commission, Gabriel Fuks, said that there will be a presentation on the “absolute illegality” of the detention of the Argentine ship in the Ghanaian port.
"It’s clear that the first point is that the vulture funds continue to operate and attack Argentina,” he said. In an interview on radio FM Blue, he said that if “this issue is dragged out, Argentina will not back down to an extortive situation.”
"There is an intention to resolve this quickly, but the perception I have is that it’s going to go to the arena of the international courts, which will take time,” Fuks said.
While an Argentine delegation is in Ghana to try to solve the conflict, the Economy mission present at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Tokyo said that the demands from the vulture funds are “ridiculous”.
"Argentina still faces extraordinary demands, at times ridiculous, from creditors known as “vulture funds” who want to get privileged treatment,” said the statement by Argentina before the International Financial and Monetary Committee. The mission to Tokyo was led by Finance Secretary Adrian Cosentino.
Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuian and Defense Vice Minister Alfredo Forti arrived yesterday in Ghana on a diplomatic mission. They went to the navy ship, held 11 days ago by judicial order in that country.
The ship remains anchored in the Ghanaian port of Tema after a judge from that country agreed with a complaint from NML Capital, which is demanding more than US$370 million.
The Argentine discourse mentions the case of the frigate, but the version put out on the IMF website calls it “an attempted seizure.”
"Because of the lack of an international legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring, Argentina continues to be confronted by a minority of creditors that are impeding the completion of the process of debt restructuring,” the text said.
Argentina turned to the authorities of the African country to try to recover the ship which could remain there for months.
With that situation, according to statements from some family members of the crew, in the coming days a group of more than 300 occupants of the Frigate could be repatriated to Argentina by air.
"We’re going to make bilateral efforts with Ghana and afterwards we will follow the path set forth by international law,” Defense Minister Arturo Puricelli said today in a radio interview. In recent hours some disagreements have come out between his team and the Foreign Ministry, over the convenience of docking in the African port.
On Thursday, Ghana’s judiciary rejected a request from the Argentine government to allow the Argentine naval teaching vessel to set sail. The government had filed a request in the Commercial Court of Accra to release the ship, arguing it had diplomatic immunity.
Among those on board the Argentine ship are soldiers invited on the instructional voyage from Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Peru, among other countries.
La Nacion
Sparks between Defense and Foreign Ministry over the Frigate
Saturday, October 13, 2012
By Mariano De Vedia
In the almost 11 hours of flight that took them last night to Accra, the capital of Ghana, the vice ministers of the Foreign Ministry and Defense not only began to define strategies for solving the unprecedented detention of the Frigate Libertad in the port of Tema. According to military sources, both had time to also smooth out the rough edges arising between ministers Héctor Timerman and Arturo Puricelli, who disagreed on whether the ship should land in these African shores.
"The Navy didn’t want to go to Ghana. There is almost no exchange between the military forces of either country, there is no naval nor military attaché there and the terrain is not known,” a source told LA NACION who was with Puricelli recently, sharing the side of the Navy. The source said, on that issue, that the naval leadership advised the Foreign Ministry against adding ports in Senegal, Ghana and Angola to the ship’s itinerary, which has been halted for the last 11 days by judicial order.
The political decision, however, prevailed to prioritize the outreach to those countries, as a prolonging of the trade outreach that the government promoted this year with the Angolan regime.
While the Defense team blames the Foreign Ministry for the decision to go there, last night Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain and Defense Vice Minister Alfredo Forti finally departed for Accra with the mission to avoid the attachment of the ship on which there are 289 Argentine sailors stranded, along with 23 graduates from Uruguay and Chile and 13 special guests.
After the decision of the Ghana court, which took the side of the complaint from the foreign bondholders against the Argentine state and stopped the ship from sailing, in the last hours messages have been revealed from families of the crew, which spoke of the uncertainty of the subofficials and sailors who didn’t know how the voyage will continue.
According to what LA NACION could uncover, the mission that the vice ministers will lead has a purely political character and there is no certainty that the efforts will have a decisive influence on the judicial process.
Bilateral negotiation
Puricelli confirmed yesterday that the Argentine vice ministers will make a bilateral effort before the Ghana government, accentuating the political cost of the negotiation. And it was said that if these efforts “don’t bring a favorable solution, we will follow the path set forth by international law.”
Also in the Foreign Ministry they confirmed that Argentina “will exhaust all judicial levels in Ghana and international courts in defense of its sovereignty, against the vulture funds.” From that strategy it appears that the conflict could turn into a prolonged legal process, for which the debate has already opened up around the manning of the ship in the port of Tema, some 7,366 km from Buenos Aires.
The selection of the ports on the teaching trip by the Frigate Libertad were not done at random.
Naval sources, for example, regretted the decision to have the ship avoid touching land in Great Britain, France and Italy, as “while they’re countries where the vulture funds have tried actions against the Argentine government, historically they’ve always been respectful of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” said a naval official to LA NACION.
Two years ago, in the Regatta of the South America Bicentennial Sails 2010, by decision of the Argentine government the Frigate Libertad participated in the rounds up to the stage where it arrived at La Guaira, Venezuela. With the fear of facing difficulties in other ports, it pulled out of the track that went on to Santo Domingo and Veracruz. “They didn’t want to run risks and avoided sailing north of Venezuela,” the source recalled.
Without it being clear what the future of the voyage of the frigate holds – which after Ghana was expected in Angola, Namibia and South Africa – it came out that Puricelli suspended the trip which was programmed for the next month.
The international conflict with the bondholders, as such, has put the Frigate Libertad on the front pages of newspapers around the world, but left out the novelty of the modernization of its laboratories and communications and navigation equipment, debuting on this teaching trip.
"I don’t know when we’ll go"
"I don’t know when we will be able to go. The commanders of the ship took precautions and we have sufficient supplies. Everything depends on the efforts by the Foreign Ministry,” said Luis Suárez, a bartender on the Frigate Libertad, in one of the first communications with the media from the ship itself. The vessel is commanded since February by Navy Captain Pablo Lucio Salonio, 50, and the second in command is Frigate Captain Carlos María Allievi, 47. "Not even the sailors themselves know how the trip will go on,” said Gerardo González, brother of one of the sailors on board.
Perfil
The Navy is analyzing the evacuation of the Frigate Libertad
Saturday, October 13, 2012
By Fernando Oz
While officials from the Navy are analyzing a plan to evacuate the crew members from the Frigate Libertad, the vice ministers of Defense, Alfredo Forti, and Foreign Relations, Eduardo Zuain, will travel to Ghana to negotiate with the authorities of that country on a way out of the judicial conflict. The families of the sailors that are stranded in the African country have already shared their concerns with national authorities.
The ship remains tied up in the port for more than a week, after the Ghana courts took the side of a request for attachment filed by NML Capital, and then yesterday rejected an appeal filed by the Argentine government. Defense Minister Arturo Purricelli and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman have also decided to form a working group to assist the group that is crossing the Atlantic to rescue the old school ship of the Argentine Armada.
Meanwhile, sources at Edificio Libertad acknowledged to PERFIL that work is under way on a plan to bring the crew of the Frigate Libertad back. “Everything depends on how long the conflict lasts, if that comes to pass the crew will have to be relayed, above all the cadets that are on the instructional voyage. And we have to send people to take care of the ship,” said a high ranking official. Among the personnel on board the Argentine ship are guest soldiers on the voyage from Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Peru, among others.
Sources from the Navy told DyN that “the crew is in very good shape” and they “are being very well treated” in Ghana and can communicate with their families in Argentina. In this sense, the director of the port of Tema, Richard Anamoo, told AFP that the ship didn’t need to move to refuel, and said that the ship’s crew has “freedom to roam the environs.”
“Nobody is obliging them to stay on board,” Anamoo said.
For his part, crew member Luis Melián told the news agency that “we don’t know how much time we have to be here.”
On Tuesday, Argentina’s attorney, Larry Otu, argued that it “was very clear that Libertad is a military ship and is immune from the reach of any judicial decision in this country.”
In a statement, both ministries said that “this judicial decision is a violation of international laws which enshrine the immunities that the Frigate enjoys from its status as a war ship.”
MercoPress
Monday, October 15, 2012
“We trust the political mission will be successful”, said the Navy Secretary General who pointed out that the vessel “remains delayed but it is another step in the journey”.
As to the situation of the crew, which includes the latest promotion of Argentine Navy cadets, plus guests from other naval schools in Africa and South America (Uruguay and Chile) the top officer said that “the crew is very well, they are in constant touch with their families, and hoping that the mission that went to Ghana will get the ship sailing again.”
ARA Libertad has been retained in the port of Tema since last 2 October following an injunction placed by a US federal court on request from a hedge fund which holds Argentine defaulted sovereign bonds and want to cash them.
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