Argentine press looks back on conflict

Most Argentines feel the invasion was a tactical error

By Peter Greste BBC South America correspondent

All the major daily papers in Buenos Aires feature the 20th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.

Papers like Clarin have been running special colour supplements over the past few days and publishing reminiscences from war veterans.

Clarin has tracked down the most decorated veteran of the war - who also happens to be unemployed and living in poverty.

The papers still refer to the islands by Argentine names

The paper's reporter recounts a tearful interview with the veteran Oscar Poltronieri, who laments that in Argentine society, it is as if the veterans do not exist.

Both Pagina 12 and La Nacion take up similar themes - this time focusing on the extraordinarily high suicide rate amongst veterans.

According to Pagina 12's sums, in the past two decades, 269 veterans have taken their own lives. That is only a few less than the 326 Argentines who died in combat on the islands.

But it is Clarin which probably speaks for most of the nation in its editorial when it admits the war was a grave tactical and strategic error that did untold damage to Argentina's international standing, its internal political structures and to its long-term struggle to win control of the islands.

The paper says there is no question of a return to force to win them back, but the focus should be on a negotiated settlement.

And finally as a measure of thinking here, all the papers use the Argentine names for the islands and their geographical features - even when they are translating quotes from the islanders themselves.

There is no such thing as Port Stanley here - it is Puerto Argentina.