Argentinian President Javier Milei has threatened to ‘take matters into our own hands’ in a fresh warning to the UK over the Falkland Islands.
Addressing the United Nations in New York, the South American leader delivered a blistering speech in which he demanded that the international community back his claim over the South Atlantic British territory.
“For us, the Malvinas are a national cause. I repeat, the Malvinas for us are a national cause,” Mr Milei declared, using the Argentine name for the Falklands.
Britons have inhabited the islands for centuries, preceding Argentina’s existence as a nation-state, and have consistently and overwhelmingly backed maintaining links to the UK.
Nevertheless, Mr Milei described Falklanders as being “implanted by the occupying power on a territory whose sovereignty is in dispute.
“That principle exists to liberate colonised people, not to legitimise situations arising from colonisation,” he claimed.
The Argentinian President said that the dispute was “not merely an issue between Argentina and the United Kingdom”, but also a test of whether the UN could “enforce its own resolutions”.
“An organisation established to defend the territorial sovereignty of its members decided to look the other way about the situation of the Malvinas Islands.”
Javier Milei has threatened to ‘take matters into our own hands’ during his speech at the UN
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He demanded the UN take action over development at Sea Lion, an offshore oil site found in the North Falkland Basin, which he described as an “unlawful act”.
“What use is a resolution if for decades the other party can act in direct contravention of it, while that resolution remains intact in the archives but powerless in the face of reality?”
“There is no shortage of words or resolution, but what is lacking is consequences.”
Addressing the UK, he called on London to “resume negotiations with a view to finding a peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute as required by international law”.
The Argentinian leader demanded that the UN support his country’s claim on the British territory
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However, Mr Milei made it clear that the UN would not bind him as he issued his sharpest warning.
“Argentina is not going to sit around waiting for the UN and the international community to live up to their own mandate,” he said.
“We’re going to take matters into our own hands.”
“For far too long, Argentina managed its own decline. We managed poverty, we managed isolation, we managed irrelevance.
‘Argentina is not going to sit around waiting for the UN and the international community,’ Mr Milei declared
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“We grew accustomed to debating how to divide up what remained, rather than asking ourselves how we could grow again, how we could rebuild what we had lost.
“That’s over. We’ve already lost too much. We do not want to lose it again,” the firebrand pledged.
Ahead of Mr Milei’s latest threat, Andy Burnham stressed that the UK would “stand firm in the face of any threats”.
“We will defend the right of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination and to remain British.
“I just wanted the President to know directly from me that’s the clear British position and he very much understood what I was saying,” the Prime Minister said in New York.
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