President Alberto Fernández spoke today at an event in Almirante Brown, in Buenos Aires province, on the anniversary of the Malvinas war. 

“The British occupation of the islands forces us to be firm and double our efforts in the sphere of international organizations to claim our sovereignty,” he said. “We’ll never stop demanding, in every international forum, our right to maintain our territorial sovereignty.” 

The president also addressed the war veterans, saying it was “unfair” to ignore the veterans after the war, carried out by the last military dictatorship in 1982 when they were losing power. 

“We should be proud of them, and place them where they should have always been: motherland heroes.” 

Today marks the 41st anniversary since the start of the war when Argentina and the United Kingdom fought each other for 74 days. 649 Argentine and 255 British soldiers died. Veterans were ignored by the Argentine government for years,  living unacknowledged and without state benefits for decades. 

“The government and our people honor our fellow Argentines who fought courageously for the sovereignty of the Malvinas islands,” said a statement from the Foreign Ministry released earlier today. 

“In 1982 our country was governed by an illegal and illegitimate military dictatorship, which acted independently of the Argentine people and deviated from Argentina’s traditional commitment [to] a peaceful solution to the question of the Malvinas Islands.” 

A month ago, Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero told his UK counterpart James Cleverly that Argentina would terminate the “Foradori-Duncan” treaty that both countries signed in March 2016. It included cooperation agreements regarding Malvinas Islands (which the UK refers to as the Falkland Islands, although Argentina strongly contests this name). 

At today’s event, Fernández said that his government “undid the Foradori-Duncan agreement little by little” and now “it doesn’t exist anymore”. 

“It was a shameful pact that allowed the UK to fly back and forth from Malvinas to São Paulo [Brazil], and allowed them to exploit the sea around the islands, which are Argentine,” he said. 

Last March, in addition to shutting down the Foradori-Duncan agreement, Argentina asked the UK for a meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to renew talks regarding sovereignty. The Foreign Minister is also expected to bring up the issue at the UN Special Committee on Decolonization in June and the General Assembly in September.

-with information from Télam