Sept. 4 (UPI) — Argentine President Javier Milei revived his country’s claim to the Falkland Islands and said his government would slap oil companies that explore or drill fields close to the British controlled island with sanctions.
In a televised national address Thursday, Milei said the island were “under British occupation” but they were Argentina’s “historically and legally,” that it needed to recover them and that the islands’ people did not have the right to self-determination.
“The islands are ours, they were taken from us, and they are indispensable to Argentina in the coming decades. It’s our obligation,” he said.
The sanctions threat was a reference to the huge Sea Lion oilfield in the South Atlantic, 140 miles north of the islands, which is being developed by the U.K.-subsidiary of Israel’s Navitas Petroleum and Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration, with Milei calling the project a “clear and present danger.”
In back to back statements on Thursday and Friday, Downing Street said Britain’s stance on the islands’ status was fixed, citing a 2013 referendum in which 99.8% of residents voted in favor of the islands remaining a British overseas territory, and that it was “clear that the Falkland Islanders’ right of self-determination extends to the right to exploit their own natural resources.”
Milei’s comments came hours after Donald Trump suggested to GB News that the United States might not back Britain if Argentina attemped to retake the islands because Britain failed to militarily back the United States in its conflict with Iran.
“Your country was not there to help me. We didn’t need help, but I did ask NATO, and I asked your former leader [ex-Prime Minister Keir Starmer], ‘why didn’t you send a couple of ships?'” Trump said, adding that he found the episode eye opening.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said the United States was reviewing its position on the Falklands.
Trump’s comment came after The Telegraph was told by a senior U.S. official that the Department of Defense was looking at changing its stance on the islands as a way of motivating Britain to commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense as part of a wider effort to ensure NATO allies in Europe met the target.
The Falklands have been the object of a territorial dispute between Britain and Argentina for decades, culminating in a bloody 74-day war after Argentinian forces invaded and occupied the islands in 1981.
Britain dispatched a carrier strike group and thousands of troops, retaking the islands on June 14, 1982, after the Argentinian military formally surrendered.
The United States has no formal position on sovereignty but has long accepted that they are British-controlled, taking a pragmatic middleway of not disputing the reality of the facts of the situation.
