ARGENTINA’S FOREIGN MINISTER will lodge an official complaint with the United Nations later today over what his country says is the militarisation of the seas around the Falkland Islands.
Hector Timerman will make the complaint to the presidents of the Security Council and the General Assembly in New York later today amid growing tensions between Britain and Argentina over the tiny South Atlantic islands.
The islands are controlled by Britain but Argentina disputes this and claims that the British government’s decision to send its destroyer, the HMS Dauntless, to the region is an act of “militarisation”.
President Cristina Fernandez asked her British counterpart, prime minister David Cameron to “give peace a chance” earlier this week.
Britain has denied the claims, a Downing Street spokesman told BBC News: “We are not militarising the South Atlantic, our military posture remains the same.”
It comes ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War where Argentina briefly occupied the islands before Britain defeated the military government of the time in a ten-week long war.
“Hector Timerman will meet with Ambassador Kodjo Menan, president of the United Nations Security Council to present the Argentinian complaint against the militarisation that the United Kingdom is carrying out from the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic,” a foreign ministry statement said.
Fernandez is reported as having told journalists yesterday that Timerman was en route to New York to complain “about the militarisation and the introduction of nuclear arms in the zone.”
The arrival of the HMS Dauntless in the South Atlantic is just the latest in a series of developments that have sparked tensions between the two countries.
The Queens’ grandson Prince William has also been deployed to the region in his role as a search and rescue pilot. Currently around 1,700 British forces are stationed around the islands as they have been ever since the 1982 war.
In another development, the top football league in Argentina was renamed after a naval ship, the General Belgrano which was sunk by the British during the Falklands War with the loss of over 320 Argentine servicemen.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say