Argentina on Thursday denounced what it termed the “illegal appropriation” by Britain of oil in the Falkland Islands, where a British oil company said it had made a discovery of crude oil.
“Argentina strenuously rejects Britain’s attempt to illegally appropriate non-renewable natural resources” in the waters off the island chain, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The statement declared the islands “the property of the Argentine people” and said Buenos Aires would take measures, in keeping with international law, to prevent Britain from gaining access to the oil. The Argentine government also vowed to take unspecified “measures to sanction any enterprise that has a hand, directly or indirectly, in the exploration or exploitation” of Falklands oil.
The statement was issued as the British company Rockhopper, an oil and gas exploration concern, announced on Thursday it had made a discovery of crude oil in a well in the Atlantic archipelago.
“We are extremely excited by the results of this well,” Rockhopper managing director Samuel Moody said in a statement.
Argentina and Britain went to war in 1982 over the remote south Atlantic archipelago, which is known in the Spanish-speaking world as the Malvinas. The islands lie 450km off Argentina’s Atlantic coast.
Britain recaptured the islands following an Argentine military invasion, but Buenos Aires has never abandoned its claim to ownership and has vigorously protested oil exploration by the British.
On Tuesday, South American leaders endorsed the Argentine position at a summit by the 12-nation Union of South American Nations, charging that the oil exploration was being “illegally carried out.”
The statement said the oil prospecting violated a UN resolution that called on London and Buenos Aires to resolve their differences over the archipelago.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS