Sean Penn attacks ‘Falklands colonialists’

Just last week the UK was forced to dismiss claims it was “militarising” the situation in the South Atlantic by deploying nuclear weapons nearby.

Penn met Argentine president Cristina Kirchner in Buenos Aires and urged Britain to join United Nations-sponsored talks over what he called “the Malvinas Islands of Argentina”.

“It’s necessary that these diplomatic talks happen between the United Kingdom and Argentina,” he said. “I think that the world today is not going to tolerate any kind of ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology.”

The Oscar-winner, 51, made the comments following months of escalating rhetoric between the two nations.

Most recently, Argentina has said it had intelligence that a Vanguard submarine had been sent to the area and demanded to know whether it was carrying warheads.

“Thus far the UK refuses to say whether it is true or not,” foreign minister Hector Timerman told a press conference.

“Are there nuclear weapons or are there not? The information Argentina has is that there are these nuclear weapons.”

The accusation, made through a translator, came as Mr Timerman urged the UN to intervene in the long-running row.

He said the UK was using an “unjustified defence of self-determination” to maintain a military base on the Falklands, which allowed it to dominate the Atlantic.

But Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Sir Mark Lyall Grant branded the idea that the UK was “militarising” the situation “manifestly absurd”.

Recently, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Kirchner have traded barbs prompting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to issue a statement expressing “concern about the increasingly strong exchanges”.

Tempers flared after HMS Dauntless was deployed to the region, although London insisted the move was merely routine.