The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, participated this Thursday (2) in an event that commemorated 44 years since the start of the Falklands War (a conflict that lasted just two months, with the Argentines’ defeat to the United Kingdom) and once again claimed Buenos Aires’ sovereignty over the archipelago, a British overseas territory.
“I want to reaffirm our right to the full exercise of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas,” said Milei in a speech in Plaza San Martín, in the Argentine capital.
“The 1982 South Atlantic conflict did not change the legal nature of this dispute, which continues to be recognized by the United Nations as a special and particular colonial situation that must be resolved through mature and sincere dialogue between Argentina and the United Kingdom,” added the president, according to information from the Infobae website.
Milei said he was grateful for the “repeated support and statements in favor of the issue of the Malvinas Islands within the scope of the United Nations Special Committee on Colonization, of the Organization of American States [OEA] and Mercosur, among other forums”, claiming that such support “reaffirms the legitimacy of our claim and follows Argentina’s call to move towards a peaceful and definitive solution”.
The Argentine president stated that he intends to pay a special tribute to veterans of the Falklands War in 2027, when the conflict will celebrate its 45th anniversary, and improvements in the remuneration and benefits of the country’s military personnel.
“We are aware that there is a debt regarding the salary issue of the Armed Forces. A country that seeks to be a protagonist on the global stage needs well-paid and well-equipped forces, up to the demands of the global context”, he stated.
Milei also said that he will allocate 10% of the tax revenue from privatizations to the purchase of weapons and capital goods “to strengthen our national defense system”.
He added that what he called the “reconstruction of the Armed Forces” must “transcend all political ideology and be part of a sustained process, in accordance with the national interest. In other words, it must be a State policy.”
The Argentine claim for the Falklands is perhaps the only point on which Milei and the Peronist opposition agree, but the incorporation by Buenos Aires is rejected by the local population: in a referendum held in 2013 with inhabitants of the archipelago, 99.8% of residents said they preferred the status of a British overseas territory to be maintained.
