-BBC News
BUENOS AIRES – Argentina’s president has threatened to launch a legal challenge against the British Government unless it halts oil exploration work off the coast of the Falkland Islands.
In a social media post, President Javier Milei set a two-week deadline for the Sea Lion oilfield project, a joint venture between Israeli and British companies, to be scrapped.
The companies insist they have valid licences issued by Britain.
The comments heighten tensions between the UK and Argentina over the sovereignty of the archipelago, known in Argentina as Las Malvinas, more than 40 years after a British military task force ejected Argentine forces which had invaded the territory in 1982.
Milei said if the two-week deadline was not met, he had ‘instructed the Foreign Ministry and legal teams to initiate international arbitration’ against the UK over what he called ‘the illegal plundering of our resources through the Sea Lion Project’.
He continued to warn the UK that if the ‘illegitimate exploitation’ of the region did not end within two weeks, Argentina would take the matter before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
The International Tribunal is an independent judicial body based in Hamburg, which is responsible for the fair application of the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The move comes soon after Milei roundly criticised the UN in his speech at the General Assembly for failing to act over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. He said the UN had become ‘a useless organisation’ which only serves ‘arrogant parasites dressed up as well-intentioned bureaucrats’.
Since then, the UK Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, said that Argentina ‘lacks the ability’ to seize the Falklands by force. Milei had previously said the Sea Lion oilfield was a ‘clear and present danger’.
The Sea Lion oilfield, around 130 miles (209km) from the Falkland Islands, contains an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of oil.
Two oil companies – Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum – are due to begin extracting from the oilfield within two years.
Both companies have in the past stressed that Sea Lion holds valid licences from the Falkland Islands.
In a 2013 referendum, residents of the islands voted overwhelmingly to remain a British overseas territory – with 99.8 per cent voting in favour and just three voting against.
Argentine forces landed on the Falklands to stake a territorial claim in 1982, sparking a 74-day war over the territory as a British military task force ejected them.
The conflict led to the deaths of 255 British military personnel, three islanders and 649 Argentine military personnel.
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