Argentina has accused the United States military of trying to bring guns and surveillance equipment into the country under the cover of supplying a police training course, creating the latest diplomatic rift between the countries.
Argentine customs officials seized undeclared equipment on Thursday, including what they described as machine guns and ammunition, spy equipment and drugs like morphine, the Argentine Foreign Ministry said Sunday.
The equipment was on a United States Air Force cargo plane carrying material for a training course that an American military team had been invited to provide to Argentina’s federal police.
Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said Argentina would file an official protest in Washington and ask for a joint investigation into why the Air Force attempted to violate Argentine law by sending “material camouflaged inside an official shipment from the United States,” the ministry said in a news release.
“Argentine law must be complied with by all, without exception,” Mr. Timerman said he had told Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, after Mr. Valenzuela complained about how Argentine customs officials dealt with the cargo, the Foreign Ministry said.
Virginia Staab, a State Department spokeswoman, called the actions by Argentine officials “puzzling and disturbing” and said American officials were seeking explanations from the Argentine government.
The plane carried experts and training equipment that had been “fully coordinated with and approved by” Argentina’s government, Ms. Staab said. She said Argentine authorities conducted “an unusual and unannounced search of the aircraft’s cargo, seizing certain items.”
Ms. Staab said the confiscated equipment included one rifle, a first-aid kit, ready to eat meals, a secure communications device similar to a GPS, encrypted communications equipment, tables and personnel foot lockers that contained helmets. She said American officials were seeking “the immediate return of all items retained by the government of Argentina.”
Argentine officials described the seized material as including equipment for “intercepting communications, various sophisticated and powerful GPS devices, technological elements containing codes labeled secret and a trunk full of expired medicine.”
The dispute followed news reports about more than 100 leaked American cables from the embassy in Buenos Aires which warned of possible corruption within the Argentine government.
