Recognizing the positive role that your prestigious newspaper embodies for public information, please allow me to cooperate with you by clarifying certain issue relating to the article “Britain’s Falkland Islands remain Argentina sore point” by Orlando Crowcroft.
In this regard, I would like to make the following clarifications:
The Malvinas, South Georgias and South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas are part of Argentine territory. The letter of the president of the Argentine Republic to the prime minister of the United Kingdom on Jan. 3, 2013, after remembering the British colonial presence in part of Argentine territory, aims to request once again from the United Kingdom to resume the bilateral negotiations, according to resolution 2065 (XX) and other resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, as well as the final statements of the summits of South American-Arab countries, which includes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Republic of Argentina reaffirms its sovereign rights over the Argentine Antarctic Sector (Sector Antartico Argentino). Argentina’s permanent and uninterrupted presence in that part of the national territory started in 1904. In addition, Argentina is an original signatory of and a Consultative Party to the Antarctic Treaty, which safeguards “previously asserted rights of or claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.” Accordingly, my country rejects the pretension of the United Kingdom to give a toponymic name to an area of the Argentine Antarctic Sector and thus issued a protest to the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Buenos Aires on Dec. 21, 2012, where it also recalled its categorical rejection of all British territorial claims to Antarctica. - Jaime Sergio Cerda, Ambassador, Argentine Embassy, Riyadh
Falkland Islands claim
