UK responds to Argentina president’s pledge to ‘get back’ Falkland Islands

Britain has said the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands is not up for negotiation, after Argentina’s newly-elected president promised to “get them back”.

Javier Milei, who won a resounding victory in Argentina’s presidential election on Sunday, said Buenos Aires had "non-negotiable" sovereignty over the Falklands, the archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean which is known as Islas Malvinas in Argentina.

Mr Milei said during a TV debate in the run-up to the election that “we have to make every effort to recover the islands through diplomatic channels”.

On Tuesday a spokesperson for prime minister Rishi Sunak said: “The UK has no doubt about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, and indeed South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

“The UK government will continue to proactively defend the Falkland islanders’ right to self determination.”

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, also responded with a tweet saying “the Falkland Islands are British. That is non-negotiable and undeniable.”

He added: “99.8 per cent of islanders voted to remain British and we will always defend their right to self-determination and the UK’s sovereignty.”

The Falklands has been a British overseas territory since the 19th century, but Argentina has also claimed sovereignty over the islands. The remote group of islands was at the centre of an armed conflict in 1982 when Argentine forces invaded and briefly occupied the territory.

While British forces reclaimed the Falklands in just two months, the war claimed the lives of 255 British servicemen, three islanders and 649 Argentine personnel.

In a 2013 referendum, 99.8 per cent of 3,500 people in Falkland Islands voted in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory.

Asked about the islands in the TV debate, Mr Milei had said: “What do I propose? Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands is non-negotiable. The Malvinas are Argentine.

“Now we have to see how we are going to get them back. It is clear that the war option is not a solution.

"We had a war - that we lost - and now we have to make every effort to recover the islands through diplomatic channels."

In an interview with the daily La Nacion, he proposed that the UK hand over the Falklands to the South American country in a similar way to how Hong Kong was given back over to Chinese rule in 1997.

The populist leader, who has called himself an anarcho-capitalist and expressed admiration for Margaret Thatcher – the British prime minister during the time of the Falklands conflict – also said the views of those living on the islands “cannot be ignored”.

Earlier this year, Argentina walked away from a 2016 cooperation pact and called for new talks over the sovereignty of the island. At a G20 meeting in New Delhi, Argentina foreign minister Santiago Cafiero told then-UK counterpart James Cleverly that his government was abandoning the pact.