Britain on Wednesday accused Argentina of “colonialism” in its claim to the Falkland Islands, as the 30th anniversary of their conflict over the British-ruled territory approaches.
A day after Britain’s National Security Council discussed the Falklands’ defenses, British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament that London was committed to protecting the South Atlantic islands and added that people there should be allowed to decide their own nationality.
Cameron said he was determined that the islands’ defenses were in order and that islanders’ wishes were paramount.
“We support the Falkland islanders’ right to self-determination,” he said. “What the Argentinians have been saying recently I would argue is actually far more like -colonialism because these people want to remain British and the Argentinians want them to do something else.”
In June last year, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez described Britain as a “crass colonial power in decline” for refusing to hold talks over the islands, known as Las Malvinas in Spanish. Argentine officials were quick to hit back over Cameron’s remarks on Wednesday.
“It’s totally offensive,” Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said, while Foreign Minister Hector Timerman described Britain as “a synonym for colonialism.”
“Evidently at a time when only scraps of colonialism linger, Great Britain ... has decided to rewrite history,” Timerman told the state news agency.
London has controlled the islands, about 480km off the -Argentine coast, since 1833. Its two-month war with Argentina in 1982 resulted in the deaths of 255 British and about 650 Argentine soldiers.
The British government says it will only agree to sovereignty talks if the territory’s 3,000 residents ask it to, and that the islanders want to remain British.
Tensions have risen in recent years over offshore oil exploration and have gained steam before the April anniversary of the conflict, as well as the planned tour of duty on the islands by Britain’s Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, later this year.
Last month, the South American trading bloc Mercosur — including associate member Chile — agreed that vessels sailing under a Falklands Islands flag would be banned from docking at any of its ports as an act of solidarity with Argentina.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, visiting Mercosur’s economic powerhouse Brazil, discussed the Falklands in Brasilia on Wednesday, but the Brazilian government said it backed Argentina in the dispute and would apply the shipping ban.
Hague said differences over the Falklands did not prevent a “vastly productive relationship and growing friendship” with Brazil, whose economy is now the size of Britain’s.
“He knows that Brazil, and all Latin American and Caribbean countries, support Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands,” Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota told reporters.
“We have to abide by Mercosur’s resolutions,” Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim said after meeting with Hague.
Besides, “Argentina is our number one strategic ally,” he added.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS