Falkland Islands dispute heats up

It seems an unlikely scrap of land to squabble over. Treeless, remote, and blasted by the full fury of the South Atlantic, the Falkland Islands are home to less than 3,000 people, and thrilling only to those who love nature, big winds, and spectacular isolation.

But Britain and Argentina considered the archipelago important enough to fight over in 1982. And suddenly, unobtrusively, a new row is simmering over the British-owned outcrop, known universally in South America as Las Malvinas.

Argentina has grumbled about British ownership of the islands, situated around 350 miles from its southern coast, ever since British forces routed Argentine troops in a 73-day war a generation ago. But recently, top Argentine officials have started laying serious claim to the Falklands once again.

In April, Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, marked the anniversary of the war's inception by saying the islands "must be a national objective of all Argentines," adding that "we must recover them for our homeland."

In June, he announced the creation of a top-level parliamentary group dedicated to winning back the disputed islands, which Argentina claims were forcibly seized by British settlers in 1833.

"The Falklands question is one of marked importance for our country, not only because it implies an evident territorial disintegration, but because of the historical significance this anomaly has for our country," says Jorge Argüello, a pro–Kirchner congressman and head of the new Parliamentary Observatory on the Falklands Question.

At the same time, the foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, used a private audience with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to request his intervention in a new round of talks on the islands' sovereignty. Tensions are set to heighten as Britain prepares a major celebration for next year's 25th anniversary of the war.

The response from Britain – and from Falklanders – has been unequivocal. Britain says that as long as the islanders want to remain part of Britain there can be no question of ceding sovereignty, despite the annual £100 million ($191 million) bill of keeping 1,200 soldiers on the islands.

Sir Nicholas Winterton, a British MP who chairs a parliamentary group on the Falkland Islands, says Mr Kirchner's "aggressive comments" were "without foundation and totally unjustified. The comments are no doubt for internal domestic purposes," he says, a reference to upcoming elections in Argentina.

And the islanders apparently have no wish to cede their British status. "We are happy with our state as overseas territory of the [United Kingdom]," says Sukey Cameron, the islands' representative in London. "We are a British community and we value and wish to retain those links."

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