Photo: AFP
British Foreign Minister David Cameron on a visit to the Falkland Islands this week vowed to help protect the islands as long as they wanted to remain under British control, prompting a tongue-in-cheek jibe from his Argentine counterpart.
Argentina has sought to resume talks on sovereignty of the South Atlantic islands, over which Britain and Argentina fought a brief war in 1982. But Britain says that is not on the table as long as the inhabitants want to remain British.
"As long as the Falkland Islands want to be part of the UK family, they are absolutely welcome to be that, to be part of that family," Cameron told reporters on his visit on Monday.
"And we will support them, and back them and help protect and defend them, absolutely, as far as I'm concerned, for as long as they want. And I hope that's for a very, very long time, possibly forever."
Argentine foreign minister Diana Mondino thanked Cameron on Tuesday afternoon for "including Argentina in his visit to the region."
"We will be happy to receive him, on the next occasion, also in Buenos Aires," she wrote on social media platform X.
Argentine President Javier Milei, who took office in November, has said Buenos Aires should try to take back the islands, known in Argentina as Islas Malvinas, through diplomatic channels.
In 2013, when Cameron was UK prime minister, Falklands residents voted almost unanimously in a referendum to remain under British rule as a British overseas territory.
Cameron paid his respects at a memorial in Port Stanley to those who died in the Falklands War, which claimed the lives of 255 British and 649 Argentine personnel.
"Of course, we want to have good relations with Buenos Aires, with the Argentine government," Cameron, who met Milei last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, told reporters.
"The new government, I think, have taken some positive steps and we'll have good relations with them. But it will never be at the expense of the wishes of the Falkland Islanders."
- This story was first published by the Reuters