
Only 15% of Argentines think Falkland Islanders should have a say in their own future, and a quarter still believe that the islands will one day be governed from Buenos Aires, but in the UK, 88% of British people said the Islanders should have a say on who ruled them.

Argentina blasted the UK over the coming Falkland Islands referendum claiming it is acting with ‘ill faith’ trying to introduce elements of distortion by changing the definition of the dispute under international law, despite all the pronouncements of the world community.

By Harold Briley, London
A demand that President Obama should stop siding with Argentina in the Falkland Islands dispute and instead fully back Britain and the Islanders has been made by a team of eminent US academics. In a sustained attack, they condemn United States policies as hypocritical and dangerous by claiming a posture of neutrality while supporting Argentina, which is conducting a campaign of “bullying intimidation, aggression, coercion and confrontation”.

As world leaders were arriving at Caracas late Thursday for Friday’s funeral ceremony of President Hugo Chavez, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez and her delegation were back in Buenos Aires. The Argentine president visited the Military Hospital’s chapel Thursday noon for a final goodbye to the Venezuelan leader and then ordered the flight back to Buenos Aires.

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez was the only leader given the option of visiting the ailing Hugo Chavez in hospital but declined, according to Venezuelan independent journalist Nelson Bocaranda who was the first to make public the news, 19 months ago, that the charismatic leader was suffering cancer.

Officials from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank arrived in Argentina on Tuesday to evaluate the country's financial system as part of checkups agreed among Group of 20 nations, according to a report from the official state news agency, Telam.

A demonstration by pickets in the Argentine Tierra del Fuego port of Ushuaia protesting the docking of the ‘Star Princess’ cruise which arrived from the Falkland Islands was contained by local security forces and the blaring of ‘God save the Queen’.

The dollar ‘clamp’ in Argentina had led to a ‘dollar trickle’ to Uruguayan banks, which according to official data from the two central banks can be estimated at a million dollars per day.

The Globe and Mail (*) editorial published Sunday, March - As a country that with some justice prides itself as a global beacon for democracy, the United States should abandon its equivocation over the status of the Falkland Islands and agree to throw its considerable weight behind the winner of the referendum asking Islanders whether they wish to remain a UK overseas territory.

The referendum on the fate of the Falkland Islands is a publicity stunt with no legal status, Argentina's ambassador to Britain said on Monday, warning that oil exploitation around the territory was impossible without better regional ties.