Argentina's new conservative president Maurico Macri declared this weekend that his government will continue to assert the country's sovereignty claims over the Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic over which Britain maintains ownership.
"Argentina renews its firm commitment to peacefully settling its differences, to international law and multilateralism," President Macri's foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday, according to The Guardian.
The statement went on to invite Britain to reopen the debate over the territory, in order to "resume as soon as possible negotiations aimed at settling fairly and definitively, the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas (Falklands) islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich islands and surrounding territorial seas."
Jan. 3 marked the 183rd anniversary of British occupation of the Falklands. The region is around 300 miles from the coast of Argentina, Time Magazine notes, and in 1982 the two nations fought a short-lived war over the archipelago, during which 649 Argentinian soldiers and 255 British were killed.
Ownership of the territory continues to be a point of diplomatic tension between the two countries. Argentina claims that it inherited the territory from Spain when it achieved independence, while Britain maintains that the UK has traditionally ruled the islands, according to Agence France-Presse.
In Prime Minister David Cameron's Christmas message to the Falklands, he said that he hoped President Macri's new government would "allow us to move towards a more mature relationship," reports the Latin Correspondent. The British government has stated that ultimately the Islanders have the right to self-determination, as the Guardian has explained.
A referendum was held on the islands in March 2013, in which the landslide majority of the Falklands population - 99.8 percent - opted to remain an overseas territory under the domain of the UK, explains the Latin Correspondent. However, the referendum has not been recognized by the Argentinian government.
