Argentina demands negotiation over Falklands sovereignty

Argentina has demanded Britain enter into talks over the sovereignty rights of the Falklands, as the 30^thanniversary of the island’s liberation is marked.

President Christina Fernández de Kirchner addressed her demands on Thursday in the United Nations Committee on Decolonisation, saying that Las Malvinas – as Argentina refers to the islands – were part of South America.

Argentina’s president has taken her country’s claim to the Falkland Islands to the United Nations, challenging Britain in a highly emotional speech to “act more intelligently” and sit down to talk about the future of the tiny archipelago.

Christina Fernández de Kirchner made her demands as she addressed the UN Committee on Decolonisation, saying that Argentina was open to negotiations as it had been in 1974, meaning that the United Kingdom must acknowledge that there was a legitimate issue of sovereignty.

Fernández insisted that Argentina just wanted to “talk” about the islands’ sovereignty, in which she described the Falklands as “an anachronistic colonial case in the South Atlantic”. “We want to renew those negotiations,” Fernández told the Committee. “We’re not asking for much. We’re just asking to talk. We’re not asking anyone to say ‘yes’ the Malvinas are Argentina’s.”

Fernández criticised the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to mark the day by flying the Falklands flag over Number 10 Downing Street. She accused Britain of abusing its privileged position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Meanwhile, Cameron insisted that there would be “absolutely no negotiation” over sovereignty of the Falklands, about 250 miles off the Argentine coast in the South Atlantic.

“This is not some game of global monopoly, with nations passing a territory between them. It’s about the islanders determining their own future,” he said in a speech commemorating the 1982 British victory over Argentina.

At the end of the meeting, the UN Decolonisation Committee adopted by consensus a similar resolution to the ones it has approved for many years calling on Britain and Argentina to negotiate.

The Falklands’ government announced earlier to hold referendum in 2013 in a bid to settle the sovereignty dispute.

Queenie Man