If you click here you can read a report from Télam, Argentina’s official news agency, about the official visit of President Bashir al Assad to Buenos Aires. You can also see a short excerpt from President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s remarks after the lunch which she hosted for the Syrian leader. She talks about the Golan Heights and the Falklands/Malvinas, the importance of founding a Palestinian state and Argentina’s desire to play a leading role in the Middle East peace process. In the story that accompanies the video mention is also made of the signing of bilateral agreements and moves to expand trade; the usual stuff of state visits.

Syria is a close ally of Iran. Several Iranians, including the country’s defense minister, are fugitives from Argentine justice. They are suspected of participating in the AMIA massacre. Though there is no mention of it here or in any other media source that I can find, there can be surely be no doubt that President Fernández de Kirchner brought this matter up in private with her Syrian counterpart and that she also raised the question of Syrian support for Hezbollah, an organization sworn to the destruction of Israel, a country with not a few citizens of Argentine origin. It’s a tribute to her diplomatic skills that she was able to do all this without in any way spoiling the warm and mutually celebratory tone of today’s lunch.