MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Princess Anne to arrive in the Falklands on the eve of the Hamburg hearing

The visit, which runs until November 20, is in her role as Patron of the South Georgia Heritage Trust, an organisation working to protect South Georgia’s heritage and environment

Princess Anne, the sister of King Charles III, will visit the Falklands and South Georgia from Monday, November 9, the day before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea holds hearings in Hamburg on Argentina’s case against the Sea Lion oil project, Buckingham Palace has announced.

The visit, which runs until November 20, is in her role as Patron of the South Georgia Heritage Trust, an organisation working to protect South Georgia’s heritage and environment. The Princess, who will travel with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, will begin with a series of engagements in the Falklands: she will meet members of the community, visit Cape Pembroke Lighthouse, Tussac House and the newly completed Falkland Islands National Sports Complex, and attend a reception at Government House in Stanley.

In South Georgia, a territory with no permanent civilian population, she will see the Trust’s work, meet British Antarctic Survey staff and members of the territory’s government, and commemorate the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), who sailed some 1,500 kilometres in a lifeboat to the island to seek help for his crew, trapped by ice in Antarctica.

The palace presents the trip as a heritage and commemorative visit. Its timing, however, coincides with a key week in the dispute over the islands: the Hamburg tribunal will hear Argentina and the United Kingdom on November 10 and 11, and Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies plans to debate the sovereignty defence bill on November 12, which toughens sanctions on companies linked to resource exploitation in the archipelago. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.