Argentina restates sovereignty over UK-held Malvinas Islands at UNSC

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has reasserted her nation’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Island during a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting, urging Britain to respect UNSC resolution on the issue.

“We don’t take a fanciful approach to the Malvinas; we simply want the UN resolution enforced,” President Fernandez said Tuesday while presiding over a UNSC meeting in New York as a rotating president this month.

She further declared that Argentina and Britain should “sit down and discuss” the sovereignty of Malvinas Archipelago in accordance with UNSC Resolution 2065, which called on both parties in 1965 to negotiate the issue.

The Argentinean president also reiterated that the islands rightfully belong to Argentina while urging restraint from both sides on resolving the matter.

“This is a litigious and controversial issue. We need to find consensus and safeguard peace,” she added.

Meanwhile, the British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters following the remarks by Fernandez that his government shall not “negotiate the Malvinas problem ignoring the wishes of its inhabitants.”

He further claimed his country “is not failing to abide by any resolution.”

London insists a referendum indicated earlier this year that 99.8 percent of the Malvinas Islanders want the area to remain a British Overseas Territory.

Buenos Aires, however, argues that the referendum is illegitimate since the British Royal Navy has expelled the Indigenous Argentineans from the islands and replaced them with British settlers.

Argentina and Britain went to war over the Malvinas in 1982, when British prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher deployed a naval task force to the South Atlantic in April 1982 to fight off an Argentine bid to retake the islands.

Nearly 255 British and 650 Argentine service members were killed in the conflict, which ended about two months later in June, with Argentine surrender.

Argentina became one of the 10 non-permanent UNSC members back in January for a two-year term.

The other five members of the council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — are permanent and have the power to veto any UNSC action according their own national interests.

Argentina, meanwhile, has taken over the presidency of the council in August and President Fernandez was invited to chair the meeting at the UN headquarters in New York.