MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

More “gas” to Falklands sovereignty dispute in UN climate conference

Argentina accused United Kingdom on Thursday of wrongly counting the Falkland Islands' greenhouse gases in its national data during a United Nations climate conference in Germany.

"The Malvinas are part of our national territory and the United Kingdom is reporting emissions that shouldn't be in their accounts" Argentine delegate Mariana Alvarez Rodriguez said on the sidelines of 166-nation talks in Bonn. The U.N. talks are examining ways to cut emissions and greenhouse global effects. Falklands' emissions include the Islanders' use of fossil fuels and emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the digestive tracts of an estimated flock of over half a million sheep. Alvarez said Britain, with a population of about 60 million, had included the Islands in three recent submissions to the United Nations about greenhouse gases and had widened the application of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol on curbing emissions to include the Falklands. She said the U.N. General Assembly had agreed that governments should add footnotes about international disputes in such tables of data. "They didn't do it," she said. One British table lists emissions in overseas territories the Falklands, Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Monserrat at 0.4 million tonnes in 2004. It includes no reference to Argentina's claims. Alvarez said such data was insensitive on the 25th anniversary of the South Atlantic conflict. "It only needs a footnote -- two lines and it's done," she said. Brazil voiced support for Buenos Aires' protest when it was first filed at a session of the talks on Tuesday, she said. A British diplomat said London had done nothing wrong and would provide a formal reply next week, she said. The British Foreign Office expressed regret Argentina was bringing pressure to negotiate sovereignty. "This will not work," a spokeswoman said. "There can be no negotiation on the sovereignty of the Islands unless and until the islanders wish so".