London’s UN ambassador warned Argentina on Friday that Britain would “robustly” defend the Falkland Islands if necessary, but added that his country remained open to bilateral talks with Buenos Aires on any issue except the islands’ sovereignty.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant was speaking to reporters after Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman met with UN -Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the UN Security Council to ask for help in stopping what he said was Britain’s “militarization of the South Atlantic.”
“We are not looking to increase the war of words, but clearly if there is an attempt to take advantage of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War by Argentina, then we will obviously defend our position and defend it robustly,” Lyall Grant said.
Photo: Reuters
The British envoy’s comments came a day after British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to defend the islands “properly.”
Britain and Argentina fought a 10-week war over the Falkland Islands in 1982 after Argentina invaded the South Atlantic islands, which the Argentines call the Malvinas. London has refused to start talks on sovereignty with Buenos Aires unless the 3,000 islanders want them.
Tensions have risen before the 30th anniversary of the Falklands conflict this year. Oil exploration by British companies off the islands has raised the stakes.
Timerman repeated accusations that surfaced in the British press about a nuclear submarine being sent to the South Atlantic. He said that bringing atomic weapons into the region violated South -America’s treaty banning the presence, pursuit or use of nuclear weapons.
Britain has signed two protocols to the 1967 treaty, according to which it vowed to support the maintenance of a nuclear-weapons-free zone across South America.
Lyall Grant denied militarizing the region and said Britain had a “purely defensive military posture” for the islands.
He neither confirmed nor denied reports a nuclear-armed British submarine is lurking around the Falklands.
“We do not comment on the disposition of nuclear weapons, submarines, etc, but it is well known that ... as part of our overall defensive posture, there are submarines on patrol all around the world at any time. So it’s not a question of anything new in what he [Timerman] is suggesting,” Lyall Grant added.
Timerman said he welcomed Ban’s offer to mediate in the dispute.
“Argentina agrees that the -secretary-general should begin conversations with both countries so that we can sit down at a table ... to resolve this conflict in a peaceful way,” he said.
Security Council action on Argentina’s complaint is very unlikely given Britain’s veto on the 15--nation panel.
Lyall Grant said Britain was open to bilateral talks with Argentina and there was no need for “third-party mediation.” He said it was Buenos Aires, not London, that was preventing talks aimed at defusing the tensions between the two nations.
“We have always been open to dialogue with Argentina ... We had a dialogue with Argentina and they broke it off,” he said, adding that “we are not going to discuss sovereignty.”
Lyall Grant said one of the problems in restarting talks with Buenos Aires was a 1994 -amendment to Argentina’s constitution requiring that the government seek sovereignty over the islands.
“We have made clear that we are not prepared to go into talks with the precondition that has been set in the Argentine constitution and discuss sovereignty over the heads of the people of the Falkland Islands,” he said.
Argentina has also condemned British plans to deploy one of its most advanced destroyers, HMS Dauntless, to the area. It has also criticized the posting of Prince William, second in line to the British throne, to the islands as a military search-and-rescue pilot.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS