MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
UK accuses Argentina of intimidating Falklands and promises help for oil companies
Argentina attempting to damage economic livelihoods of Falklands residents Britain has accused Argentina of illegally intimidating and attempting to damage the economic livelihoods of the Falkland Islands residents after the Foreign minister vowed legal action against oil companies involved in the Falklands oil industry.
Timerman warned “we will take the required legal, administrative, civil and criminal actions against oil companies currently involved in Malvinas drilling”, during a press conference Thursday in Buenos Aires.
Britain's Foreign Office responded by calling the threats “illegal, unbecoming and wholly counter-productive”.
“These latest attempts to damage the economic livelihoods of the Falkland Islands people regrettably reflect a pattern of behaviour by the Argentine government,” said the statement.
“From harassing Falklands shipping to threatening the Islanders' air links with Chile, Argentina's efforts to intimidate the Falklands are illegal, unbecoming and wholly counter-productive”, it added.
Britain also vowed to work closely with any company potentially affected by Argentina's move.
“We are studying Argentina's remarks carefully and will work closely with any company potentially affected to ensure that the practical implications for them are as few as possible.”
Timerman noted that in the past Buenos Aires had already “notified these firms that they were acting illegally” adding that “we will also send warnings to companies which might be interested in these activities, serving them notice of the possible administrative, civil and criminal sanctions they might face”.
Finally the Foreign Office underlined that ““We remain clear that domestic Argentine legislation does not apply to the Falkland Islands or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The Falkland Islands Government is, as always, entitled to develop both fisheries and hydrocarbons industries within its own waters, without interference from Argentina.”
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Read all commentsI think its time we took argentina to task at the UN, and via the ICJ if argentina again refuse to resolve the dispute at the ICJ it will show to the world that it knows its claim will fail. Oh how embarrassing that would be for argentina. ;-)))
Mar 16th, 2012 - 09:18 am 0@1 Things to remember:
Mar 16th, 2012 - 09:24 am 0a) We don't recognise anything that happened before 1970 at the ICJ
b) We offered to take the dispute over the other South Atlantic islands to the ICJ 4 times and Argentina refused, stating that the ICJ had no jurisdiction.
c) UK doesn't even have a Sovereignty issue over the falklands. Only Argentina does.
The status quo is that we protect the islands and they have freedom, and self determination. So if you took them to the ICJ based on Falklands Sovereignty, you'd be playing into their hands by entering into negotiations on sovereignty by proxy.
Better just watch the Argentinians get more and more desperate, as they run out of nag-options... then eventually they'll take the military route, again.... then we'll tame their arses, again.
Best thing to do is to ignore them, they're only going to get more embarrassing as they run out of ideas.
@1 You're absolutely right, except that it seems the Argentine government is quite shameless and unlikely to feel embarrassed in the way a civilised administration would. Argentina has been humiliated in the eyes of the world so often by its governments that a state of perpetual humiliation is just accepted as normal.
Mar 16th, 2012 - 09:28 am 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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