UK Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening has confirmed that due to recent actions by the Argentine government she is no longer confident that further investments in Argentina would be consistent with the objectives she laid out in February this year, in an answer to a House of Commons Written Parliamentary Question.
Argentine ambassador to the United Kingdom Alicia Castro renewed Argentina’s sovereignty claims over the Falkland Islands and put the Edward Snowden spy row on London’s table: “We are free nations that neither need nor want to be spied on,” Castro warned.
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange is set to take control of a key scandal-hit bank interest rate. NYSE Euronext has won the contract for setting the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (Libor), a government-backed committee announced. Libor is used to set trillions of dollars of financial contracts.
The British government announced to Parliament that it will commission a new feasibility study into the resettlement of the British Indian Ocean Territory, BIOT, whose indigenous population the Chagossian was removed in the sixties and early seventies for defense reasons and is an issue that remains highly controversial and sensitive.
Ecuador has asked the UK to help an investigation over alleged spying at its embassy in London where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is living. Ecuador named a British company it claimed planted a listening device in their ambassador's office but this was denied.
By Mike Summers (*)
Published in The Washington Times
In 1776, a group of American patriots wrote a letter to their king informing him they were unhappy with their political status and had plans to change it. Americans know this story well. That letter, the Declaration of Independence, formed the United States' profound belief that we all have certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
British Minister for Europe David Lidington strongly protested on Tuesday to Spanish Minister, Íñigo Mendez de Vigo, following an incident in British Gibraltar territorial waters, when allegedly shots were fired.
The British Government has appointed a new ambassador to Spain. Simon Manley will succeed Giles Paxman as the UK’s ambassador in Madrid and non-resident ambassador to Andorra. He takes up the post in October.
Foreign minister Hector Timerman once again anticipated Argentina’s willingness to overcome the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands sovereignty conflict through dialogue, but unfortunately a resolution of the dispute was ‘hostage in London’ and of UK’s ‘imperial disdain’.
The Decolonization Committee is no longer relevant and to describe the relation of British Overseas Territories with the UK as colonial is insulting both for the BOT and London, said a Foreign Office spokeswoman following Thursday session when the Falklands/Malvinas case was debated at the UN C24.