Argentina has accused the UK of trying to use a UN maritime treaty to undermine its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, sparking new tensions between the two countries.
Diana Mondino, Argentina’s foreign minister, recently signed a UN sponsored agreement known as the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The treaty aims to regulate fishing in international waters and will be discussed by Argentinian MPs in the coming days.
However, some politicians have already expressed their opposition to the treaty, arguing that the UK government is cleverly using the agreement to strengthen its hold on the Falklands.
Gustavo Pulti, a legislator from Unión por la Patria, said the treaty included “a recognition of the United Kingdom as a coastal state that directly affects Argentinian rights.”
He added: “This means that measures implemented in the territory cannot be questioned by Argentina due to the multilateral, not national, power created by the agreement and fundamentally due to granting coastal status to the occupying country, that is, to Great Britain.”
The former mayor of General Pueyrredón argued the agreement would make it potentially much harder for Argentina to prevent the UK from “appropriating vast resources belonging to Argentina, as clearly happens with fishing and planned oil extraction.”
“It is no coincidence that this agreement, invoking the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, has been pushed by certain environmental organisations that clearly respond to British interests,” he noted.
Pulti received support from fellow deputy Hugo Yasky, who said he “was willing to push for a law rejecting the treaty.”
“We agreed with him on the importance of urging Congress to reject the treaty and prevent our country from falling victim to a typical British ploy,” he said after a meeting with Pulti.
The Falkland Islands boast a fishery industry that brings in around £31m a year.
At the same time, the islanders are set to earn billions of pounds from the Sea Lion oilfield that potentially contains over 300 million barrels.
Teslyn Barkman, a member of the Falklands Legislative Assembly told the Express that the oil discovery would create a lot of new opportunities for UK businesses, and that around £750 million would go directly to British companies during the first two phases of development, as well as creating over a thousand jobs.
However, Argentina will not be one of the countries benefiting from the oil bonanza, due to its own political stance towards the Islands.
“Argentina has created a list of illegal economic sanctions and a bunch of domestic laws that target businesses that operate in the Falklands,” she explained.
“So, by their own doing, I suppose, they restrict businesses from investing here because they don’t recognise our people as existing, which, as you can imagine, is rather a confusing state of affairs.”
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