Argentina takes Falklands row with Britain to UN

Argentina’s president accused Britain of “militarising the South Atlantic” and said she would complain to the UN, as tension rises ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war.

Britain, which rejected the accusation, went to war with Argentina over the British-ruled Falkland Islands in 1982. London has refused to start talks on sovereignty with Argentina unless the 3,000 islanders want them. “They’re militarising the South Atlantic once again,” President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said at the presidential palace, criticising the deployment of British destroyer HMS Dauntless in the area in the coming months.

“If there’s one thing we’re going to preserve, besides our natural resources, is a region where peace prevails,” she said, adding that the Argentine foreign ministry would present a formal complaint to the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

She also criticised Prince William’s posting as a military search-and-rescue pilot in the islands, called Las Malvinas in Spanish: “We would have liked to see him dressed as a civilian, not with a military uniform,” she said.

A spokeswoman for British prime minister David Cameron rejected Fernández ’s comments. “We are not militarising the South Atlantic. Our defensive posture in the Falkland Islands remains unchanged,” the spokeswoman said. “The people of the Falklands choose to be British. Their right to self determination is a principle that’s enshrined in the UN charter,” she added.

Oil exploration by British companies off the islands has raised the stakes over the sovereignty dispute.