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ARGENTINA | 23-06-2020 17:22

Solá criticises UK's 'absolute disrespect' towards Malvinas sovereignty claim

Foreign Minister Felipe Solá weighs in on Malvinas dispute, saying Argentina will continue to express its "profound annoyance" at the United Kingdom's "absolute disrespect" towards sovereignty claim.

Foreign Minister Felipe Solá weighed in on the Malvinas dispute again on Monday, deploring the United Kingdom’s "absolute disrespect" of Argentine sovereignty claim to the islands.

"Our only aim is that the UK accepts Resolution 2065, approved by the United Nations in 1965, which mandates that it begin sovereignty negotiations," said the minister in a radio interview, adding that this does not mean being "either a hawk or a dove" but being "as effective as possible" in sitting Great Britain down at the negotiating table.

In statements to La Patriada radio, Solá said that Argentina’s posture toward the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands is to express "its profound annoyance with the United Kingdom’s absolute disrespect … in thinking that it can look the other way."

As for recent legislation presented by the government regarding Argentina’s Malvinas sovereignty claims and South Atlantic waters, he said the bills especially highlighted stiffer fines for illegal fishing.

"We can’t capture a boat and slap on it a fine from the year 1997," he pointed out.

Furthermore, Solá spelled out the scope of the bill establishing a new map to expand Argentina’s Continental Platform.

"It’s not the same as the Exclusive Economic Zone. The platform does not give us economic rights over the waters but over the seabed," he explained.

Solá detailed that "up to 200 miles nobody who is not Argentine or without an agreement with our country can undertake economic activity" but the platform occupies a greater surface.

"It’s a geological mass inherent to the continent and the work of a group of scientists between 2009 and 2016 to arrive at a resolution which is the equivalent of a second Argentina. The UK takes a slice off us because our platform reaches the Malvinas," he explained.

President Alberto Fernández alleged last week that his predecessor, Mauricio Macri, "did not put the emphasis that the subject deserves." 

"It continues to be a constant demand from Argentina that we are not going to compromise on," the Peronist leader said in an interview.

"Unfortunately, in the four years that preceded me, there was some setback from the previous government," said Fernández, accusing the former president of "being generous with the terms."

– TIMES/NA
 

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