MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

London says Argentina “lacks the ability” to take the Falklands

Streeting also said “this issue was settled in 1982” and that the will of the archipelago's residents, “the overwhelming majority of whom choose to be British”, remains unchanged

British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said Argentina “lacks the ability” to take the Falkland Islands and that the United Kingdom “has the ability to defend” them, in an interview with the Sunday paper The Sun on Sunday published on Saturday. Asked whether London could protect the archipelago militarily if Buenos Aires sent warships, he answered yes.

“This isn't 1982,” the minister said, dismissing the position of Argentine President Javier Milei as “the same old bogus propaganda”. In referring to Argentine claims he used a colloquial pejorative term for the country's citizens, which Spanish-language versions rendered simply as “the Argentines”.

Streeting also said “this issue was settled in 1982” and that the will of the archipelago's residents, “the overwhelming majority of whom choose to be British”, remains unchanged. That is the British government's position and it is contested by Argentina, which maintains the dispute remains open; the archipelago is still on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories. In the 2013 referendum, 99.8% of voters chose, on a 92% turnout, to retain the status of a British overseas territory.

The remarks were published three days after Milei's address to the UN General Assembly, in which he called on the organisation to act over what he described as unilateral British actions and argued that the principle of self-determination does not apply to the archipelago. Some British coverage framed Streeting's words as a response to the televised address Milei delivered on September 3, so it is not established which specific intervention he was answering.

The week in New York produced opposing positions from the same podium. On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham included the archipelago among challenges to the rule of law; that same night, Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno exercised the right of reply, saying the British occupation “dates back to 1833, when United Kingdom forces occupied the Malvinas Islands, breaching the country's territorial integrity and expelling the legitimately established Argentine authorities and population”, while reiterating Argentina's “full willingness” to resume negotiations. Milei spoke on Wednesday, and that same Wednesday the United Kingdom entered a written statement of rejection into the assembly's record.

Argentina's government has 60 administrative proceedings open, with no penalty applied, and three criminal complaints covering ten companies and their directors over hydrocarbon exploration in waters near the archipelago. None of the allegations has been proven. No official Argentine response to Streeting's remarks has been recorded so far.

The 1982 war lasted 74 days and left 649 Argentine service personnel, 255 British and three residents of the archipelago dead.