Agencies/Buenos Aires
Argentina rejected as illegal yesterday a referendum that is to be held among Falkland islanders on the status of the disputed South Atlantic archipelago.
“The referendum is illegal because the UN declared it to be a nation implanted since 1833 when London invaded and expelled the Argentine inhabitants,” Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said on C5N television.Timerman’s comments come amid an escalating war of words some 40 days before Falkland Island residents go to the polls March 10-11 to say whether they want the archipelago to remain a British overseas territory.
Timerman refused an offer by British Foreign Secretary William Hague to meet with Falkland Islands officials during a visit to London next week. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said in London yesterday that Britain was “disappointed” by the Argentine response. Falkland Islanders had said in a statement they would tell Timerman that they want to be “left in peace” by Argentina, which calls the archipelago Las Malvinas and claims it is occupied Argentinian territory.
In his comments to C5N television, Timerman said he still planned to travel to London on tomorro. But he accused Britain of wanting “a military base in the Falklands with projection into Antarctica,” and charged that the archipelago was “the most militarised territory in the world with one soldier for every three inhabitants.”