Minister attacks ‘domineering’ Argentina

MP Jeremy Browne described his disappointment with the Argentinian government amid heightened tensions over the disputed islands.

Politicians in Buenos Aires announced they would be launching criminal proceedings against UK oil firms operating off the Falkland’s coastline.

Mr Browne described the move as another attempt to try to hinder the economic development of the remote group of islands in the South Atlantic.

Speaking days before he was due to visit the country, Mr Browne said: “There is a G20 country, at the top table of world affairs, one would imagine keen to be responsible on the world stage, with a population of about 40 million people, seeking to put an economic blockade in place which will, in tangible terms the ambition of that is, to impoverish an isolated community with about 3,000 people.

“Which party in this arrangement are behaving in a domineering way and who are the vulnerable population who are having to make their way in the world despite a much more powerful country going out of their way to make that harder for them?”

Prime Minister David Cameron and Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner have traded barbs in the lead-up to the 30th anniversary of the conflict.

The discovery of potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves around the Falklands – which Argentina calls Las Malvinas – has further inflamed matters. Argentina announced it to sue five British firms – Desire Petroleum, Falkland Oil and Gas, Rockhopper Exploration, Borders and Southern Petroleum, and Argos Resources – claiming the firms were engaged in “illegal and clandestine activities” by drilling around the islands.

Argentina has also accused the UK of “militarising” the dispute by reportedly sending a submarine carrying nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic, something that Britain has not confirmed.

Buenos Aires also objected to the Duke of Cambridge’s posting to the Falklands as an RAF rescue helicopter pilot and the deployment to the region of one of the Royal Navy’s most modern destroyers, HMS Dauntless.