Argentina and the United Kingdom are involved in a territorial dispute over the Falkland Islands currently under London's control. The conflict escalated in 1982 with a 74-day war in which 649 Argentine soldiers died. | Photo: Twitter @Agenda_Malvinas
Buenos Aires, December 26 (RHC)-- Argentina has issued a protest against statements made by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson regarding London's alleged sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and other archipelagos in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
The dispute arose after the British Prime Minister mentioned the Falkland Islands in his traditional Christmas greeting and highlighted that in 2022 it will be 40 years since the 1982 war, unleashed by the then Argentinean military junta, and alluded to a diplomatic victory for London despite "the noisy protests of some."
The British prime minister assured that "one thing that remains absolutely unchanged is the United Kingdom's commitment to the Falklands [Malvinas] Islands and its people. "It is as firm a commitment as it was when General Moore accepted the surrender of General Menendez. And I can promise you now that that is not going to change," the head of the British government said.
In that sense, Johnson, who is in the midst of a fall in his popularity in London after recent media scandals, stressed the effort of his cabinet for the international community to recognize British sovereignty over the islands, and recalled that "even the International Table Tennis Federation recognized, before the noisy protests of some sectors, the inviolable sovereignty of the table tennis players of the Falklands."
In response, Guillermo Carmona, Secretary of Malvinas, Antarctica and South Atlantic in the Argentine Foreign Ministry, commented to the local radio station Radio Nihuil that "appealing to war arguments is unnecessary just when it is about to be 40 years since the war."
Carmona argued that "When reasons are lacking, militaristic rhetoric appears: to boast of a military victory that international law does not recognize as a title of sovereignty only reopens the wounds of war and ignores 38 years of Argentine democracy."
