The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, decided to suspend the trip he had scheduled for October to London, United Kingdom, where he planned to give a talk at the University of Oxford and hold meetings with businessmen.
Read more Trump promises to send $500 to nearly a million Americans for the “excessive charges” of Obamacare
A decision that coincides with the hardening of his government’s policy regarding the sovereignty conflict over the Malvinas Islands – under British administration since 1833 – and which was confirmed by the trans-Andean government to the newspaper Clarín.
Milei’s stay in the British capital was scheduled for October 23 and 24 and fulfilled an old desire of the libertarian leader, who since taking office expressed his wish to visit that European country, as the Argentine media recalled.
The cancellation of the trip is known one day after the British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, stated in a speech before the House of Commons that he will be “relentless” in defending sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, the official British name for the Malvinas.
“We will always respect the rights of the Falkland Islanders who have chosen to be British”, Burnham said this Thursday referring to the last referendum on the islands whose sovereignty Argentina claims.
This comes after the US president Donald Trump threatened the United Kingdom with changing the diplomatic neutrality position that Washington maintains regarding the islands.
Read more New UN world map rekindles tensions between Japan and Russia over disputed islands
A neutrality that, as Clarín highlighted, never prevented the White House from always supporting the de facto power exercised by this European country over the disputed islands in the South Atlantic, such as the Malvinas, South Georgia, and South Sandwich Islands.
A few days ago and during a national broadcast, President Milei anticipated that he will toughen sanctions against companies linked to hydrocarbon activities in the Malvinas Islands area.
Soon after, he announced that a sanctioning process had been opened against 60 companies and individuals operating directly or indirectly in the Malvinas basin without Argentine authorization, but he did not name the sanctioned companies, according to the newspaper Página 12.
The next international stop for the trans-Andean head of state will be New York, USA, where he will participate in the UN General Assembly and bring the Argentine claim for the islands administered by the United Kingdom, accompanied by the general secretary of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno.
