April 13, 2024 (EIRNS)—In a press release issued April 12, the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires responded forcefully to the outrageous attacks on China made by U.S. Southern Command commander Gen. Laura Richardson, during her April 2-5 visit to Argentina. In her remarks to one unnamed daily, the embassy charged, Richardson had “once again made erroneous comments” about China’s Deep Space Station located in Argentina’s Patagonian province of Neuquén, and about economic-trade cooperation and Chinese investments in Argentina. These “false and very absurd assertions lack the most minimum respect for Argentina or for China and are shocking and outrageous,” the statement read. Richardson has said publicly she wants the Neuquén station shut down, claiming it threatens hemispheric security.
The embassy communiqué observes that “some individuals on the U.S. side, with their bodies located in the 21st century, have left their heads stuck in the anachronistic era of the Cold War with the mentality of a zero sum game.” The U.S. falsely claims that the Neuquén space station is really a secret Chinese military operation, when in fact both China and Argentina have “repeatedly clarified the facts” as to its mission, which is entirely civilian and operates in an “open and transparent” manner. The embassy then pointedly asks, what about the 800 military bases the U.S. has set up overseas, with 179,000 personnel stationed in 159 countries? The “international community is deeply worried” about the activities on those U.S. bases, and citizens of those countries “have a right to know what military activities the U.S. is really carrying out on those military bases…. Is this not a grave undermining of the sovereignty and security of those nations?”
