The Argentine government has said that it would file criminal charges against oil company Navitas Petroleum for operating in seas off the Falkland Islands.<\/p>\n
The move came just days after Argentine President Javier Milei said he would sanction oil companies drilling in the British overseas territory in the south-west Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the news, Foreign Office Minister Kirsty McNeill insisted that there could be “no doubt” about the British government’s commitment to the Falkland Islanders.<\/p>\n
Sovereignty of the archipelago remains disputed between the UK and Argentina more than 40 years after a British military task force ejected Argentine forces which had invaded the territory in 1982.<\/p>\n
Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, McNeill said that “the decision by the Falkland Islands government to pursue hydrocarbon production is a commercial decision for them to take alongside the commercial companies involved”.<\/p>\n
She added that “the future of the Falkland Islands is for Falkland Islanders to determine”.<\/p>\n
The simmering dispute between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands heated up last week, when Milei said in a speech to the nation that the “winds of change” favoured Argentina’s claim to the islands.<\/p>\n
Milei has, in the past, been criticised by Argentine veterans of the 1982 conflict for being “too soft” on the Falklands, which Argentines call Las Malvinas.<\/p>\n
In his speech on Thursday evening local time, Milei restated his government’s position on the territory, saying “the Malvinas are Argentine, historically and legally… there’s no debate about that.”<\/p>\n
The president described drilling for oil in the archipelago as a “clear and urgent danger” to Argentine sovereignty.<\/p>\n
He also dismissed the result of a 2013 referendum in which 99.8% of the islands’ residents voted in favour of the Falklands remaining a British oversees territory.<\/p>\n
Milei argued that they were living on land which had been “usurped” by the British and therefore “have no legitimate right to self-determination”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Argentine government has said that it would file criminal charges against oil company Navitas Petroleum for operating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-763974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}