The governor of the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the Malvinas Islands, Gustavo Melilla, on Monday considered the visit of British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to the latter archipelago, over which Argentina claims sovereignty from the United States, a “provocation.” kingdom.
Melilla wrote on the “X” social website: “David Cameron’s presence in our Malvinas Islands constitutes a new British provocation that seeks to undermine our legitimate sovereign rights over our lands and the sustainability of colonialism in the twenty-first century. We will not allow this.”
Cameron arrived in the Malvinas Islands on Monday, a month after meeting Argentine President Javier Miley, whose country continues to claim sovereignty over the islands that the UK has occupied since 1833, with the exception of a 74-day armed conflict in 1982 that left 649 Argentines and 255 Britons dead. .
Melilla, an opponent of Miley's government, wrote: “We will not welcome any colonial representative of a state that attacks our territorial integrity by denigrating the memory of our Malvinas heroes and their eternal sacrifices in our province.”
The British Foreign Office said that the British Foreign Secretary “will reaffirm the United Kingdom's commitment to supporting the islanders' right to self-determination.”
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The governor declared Cameron “persona non grata” in the entire territorial extension of his province, located in the far south of Argentina, which includes the Falkland Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney and South Georgia.
The UN Decolonization Commission requests every year that the two countries open negotiations on the sovereignty dispute in the Malvinas Islands, but London systematically refuses to do so.
Guillermo Carmona, former secretary of the Malvinas region in the previous Argentine government, agreed with Melilla in regarding Cameron's trip as a “real provocation.”
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He told Agence France-Presse, “So far, the Argentine government has not rejected or protested this visit, which represents a negative position on the issue of sovereignty that we rarely see in Argentine foreign policy.”
According to Carmona, “It is a grave mistake to believe that British diplomacy will respond in kind to the Miley government, and lose the opportunity to benefit from the new scenario.”
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