MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas' 50-Peso bill, an Argentine stunt, says Foreign Office minister

President Cristina Fernandez during the announcement of the new 50-Peso bill which was officially launched in March

Britain derided a new Argentine banknote featuring the disputed Falkland Islands as a stunt on Tuesday and said it had no intention of discussing sovereignty over the archipelago with Buenos Aires.

 Tensions over the Falklands/Malvinas in Argentina still are fresh more than 32 years after Argentine forces seized them and the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher sent a task force to retake them. More than 600 Argentine servicemen, 255 British and three Islanders died in the brief war.

Hit by high inflation, Argentina issued a new 50-peso banknote this month described by the central bank as a reminder of the South American country's “undying claim” to the Malvinas Islands and other South Atlantic insular territories.

“On the issue of the 50-peso banknote, we can't stop the Argentine government from these stunts,” Hugo Swire, a minister of state at the British Foreign Office, said when asked about the note in parliament.

”It's worth a whopping 3.72 pounds ($6) according to today's exchange rate,“ he added. ”And I think it probably has the equivalent political value“.

”The note features a map of the Falklands, 450 kilometers off the Argentine coast and over 12.000 kilometers from Britain, on one side and an image of a gaucho who allegedly rebelled against British rule there in 1833 brandishing an Argentine flag on the other.

Swire said the Argentine embassy had recently sent a book and a letter to the British parliament, complaining about a lack of dialogue on sovereignty.

”It (the book) ignores the inconvenient truth that some people on the Islands can trace their Falklands ancestry back through nine generations, longer than the current borders of Argentina have existed,“ said Swire.

”There would be no sovereignty talks with Argentina in line with the Islanders' own wishes”, he added.