Britain Says Joint Sovereignty Deal for Gibraltar 'Fantastic'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 15, 2002

Britain Says Joint Sovereignty Deal for Gibraltar 'Fantastic'

Britain said on Sunday the permanent joint sovereignty deal on Gibraltar it reached with Spain would be a "fantastic deal" to the local people.

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Britain said on Sunday the permanent joint sovereignty deal on Gibraltar it reached with Spain would be a "fantastic deal" to the local people.

Foreign Office Minister on European affairs, Peter Hain, said a shared deal, ending almost three centuries of British rule in Gibraltar, was a good deal for Britons living on the small peninsula situated on Spain's southern tip, although the majority of its 30,000 residents are accusing London of a sell-out.

Hain was speaking two days after British Foreign Secretary JackStraw said Britain and Spain were in broad agreement that they should share permanent sovereignty of Gibraltar.

Joint sovereignty would "not make one iota of practical difference to daily life on the rock which will remain British -- their traditions, their customs, their citizenship will remain British for as long as they like," Hain said.

"Life will go on as usual, except for the better," he told Sky News.

Hain stressed that Britain would not support Spain's demands for a temporary agreement for shared sovereignty.

"We are not prepared to see this agreement as a stepping stone to full Spanish control over Gibraltar. We were never going to hand over control of Gibraltar to Spain -- that's not on the cards,full stop, end of story," he added.

On Friday, Straw told the House of Commons that British governments were "closer than ever before to overcoming nearly 300years of fraught history".

He said shared sovereignty was one of a number of principles onwhich London and Madrid were agreed and that once a final deal hadbeen struck, it would be put to residents of the territory in a referendum vote.

But Gibraltar's chief minister Peter Caruana reacted angrily toStraw's announcement, saying his people would interpret it as "a complete betrayal" and surely veto it in a referendum.

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