The Argentine Foreign Minister, Santiago Cafiero, informed the United Kingdom on Thursday of the decision to end the 2016 Foradori-Duncan Pact on the Malvinas Islands.
“I did this in a meeting with UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly at the G20 Foreign Ministers Summit in New Delhi, India,” Cafiero wrote on Twitter.
Cafiero proposed a meeting between the two countries at the United Nations headquarters, in New York, to launch the “discussion for sovereignty.”
«Argentina thus complies with the mandate of the General Assembly and the United Nations Committee on Decolonization. We honor the commitment of President Alberto Fernández and our government to support the Malvinas Question as a State policy,” he said.
The controversial agreement was signed in 2016, during the Mauricio Macri government, by the then Argentine vice-chancellor Carlos Foradori and the United Kingdom’s Minister of State for Europe and the Americas, Alan Duncan, at the British embassy in Buenos Aires.
“One of the most damaging facts”
In a statement, the Argentine Foreign Ministry explained that Buenos Aires has sought to collaborate “in specific matters such as flights, scientific activity in Antarctica or conservation and preservation of fishing resources, without the demonstrated willingness having been reciprocally responded to.”
On the contrary, the text continues, “the United Kingdom has continuously carried out unilateral acts, which have been opportunely and duly protested by the Argentine Republic.”
Likewise, the Foreign Ministry considered the pact as “one of the most harmful events for the historic claim for the exercise of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands.”
“That document made concessions to British interests in the region and regressed notably in the just claim for sovereignty, it was even made known as a ‘joint communiqué’ to avoid complying with the constitutional obligation to submit international agreements to the National Congress for approval. signed by the Executive Branch,” the text stated.
Therefore, he added, it is a pact with “manifestly illegitimate characteristics and offensive to national interests.”
Background
After almost 41 years of the war conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas, which ended in June 1982 with the victory of the British, Buenos Aires continues to assert its claim for London to resume negotiations on the sovereignty of the archipelago, in the terms established by the corresponding resolution of the UN General Assembly.
However, the European nation insists, as denounced by Foreign Minister Cafiero, that “there is no sovereignty dispute over those territories.”
The Malvinas Islands, located off the coast of the Latin American country, at the southern end of the Atlantic Ocean, have been ruled by Argentina since 1829.
In 1833, the United Kingdom occupied the archipelago, evicted the Argentine authorities and has exercised dominance over the area ever since. with RT