Post by Focus on Mar 22, 2013 14:30:07 GMT
Argentina will never go to war again over the future of the Falkland Islands, the country's ambassador to London said tonight.
However, Alicia Castro suggested that international pressure would force Britain to the negotiating table over the sovereignty of the remote British territory in the South Atlantic.
Alicia Castro, Argentina's ambassador in London
The ambassador was restating Argentina’s official policy on the Falklands, but she struck a more conciliatory tone than has often been heard from Buenos Aires in recent months.
The islands have been under UK control since 1833 but are also claimed by Argentina, which calls them Las Malvinas.
In a referendum last week, 99.8 per cent of Falklanders voted to remain British, with only three people opposing the status quo.
But Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine President, rejected the poll as irrelevant and said it was as if a “bunch of squatters” were deciding whether or not to continue occupying a building illegally
Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine President
Ms Castro told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "We will never go to war again on the Malvinas issue. I think that was a great, huge, mistake from the brutal military junta that ruled Argentina at that time.
"We will only insist in dialogue and negotiations, and I think as the United Kingdom is isolated in this matter in a point they will have to accept the need for dialogue.”
The 1982 Falklands War lasted 74 days and claimed the lives of 255 British servicemen, 655 Argentines and three islanders.
Three decades on, Mrs Kirchner and Prime Minister David Cameron regularly trade barbs about the status of the islands.
The election last week of Pope Francis, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, sparked a new row.
Mr Cameron rejected the new Pope’s claim last year that Britain had “usurped” the Falklands and told him he should “respect” the islanders’ near-unanimous referendum vote.
Recently ordained Pope Francis
Making a joke at the expense of the Vatican’s ancient election processes, he said: “The white smoke over the Falklands was pretty clear.”
Meanwhile, Mrs Kirchner has tried to recruit Pope Francis in her campaign to take control of the Falklands.
This week she appealed to him to intervene in the diplomatic war as she condemned the “British militarization of the South Atlantic”.
Last year Argentina objected to the Duke of Cambridge's posting to the Falklands as an RAF rescue helicopter pilot and the deployment to the region of one of the Royal Navy's most modern destroyers, HMS Dauntless.
Argentina won't go to war with Britain because they know for a fact that Britain has nothing to answer to and by the way what the bloody hell is the new pope sticking his oar in Britain's business, it's got fck all to with him!! - Fx
