New Spanish minister: 'Objective is to reopen sovereignty talks'

GIBRALTAR/SPAIN/UK (Agencies) While the Tripartite Forum holds a meeting at political level in Madrid today, Spain's new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trinidad Jiménez (photo), announced in parliament that her objective is to "generate enough confidence in order to renew bilateral negotiations on the sovereignty of Gibraltar." These, she said at the parliamentary 'control session', are only between Spain and the UK. The minister's response came after the president of the PP in Andalucía and Senator Javier Arenas had requested her to "abandon a weak policy of 'subservience' to Gibraltar" and to end the Tripartite Forum, which has benefitted neither Spain nor the Campo." Among other things in response to Arenas, Jiménez asked him "What opinion of the PP could David Cameron have if he heard you, as he's evidently your model and reference?" in reference to the head of the PP, Mariano Rajoy's recent praising the UK's cost cutting efforts.>

This was the new minister's first public reference to the Gibraltar question, about which she said there can be no change in Spain's position regarding sovereignty, as "that is above circumstances and personalities."

She nevertheless opined that to maintain the Tripartite Forum talks "without touching on sovereignty" leads to mesures that do benefit residents of either side of the frontier.

The political level meeting being held today in Madrid are on the subjects of police, justice and customs cooperation by both sides and follow on the technical conversations held last week on the Rock and in Algeciras.