Argentina and Great Britain Diplomatic Spat

Looks like the Malvinas Spat is flaring up again with United Kingdom pushing its case to the United Nations .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/uk-falklands-argentina-un

UK stakes claim to huge area of South Atlantic seabed




UN submission heralds battle with Argentina over mineral rights
A vast tract of the South Atlantic seabed – rich in oil and minerals – was formally claimed by the United Kingdom today in defiance of Argentinian opposition.
The submission to the United Nations commission on the limits of the continental shelf has been issued two weeks after the government in Buenos Aires lodged its application to extend control over an almost identical area of underwater territory.
The British claim is contained in a 63-page document that will be posted on the UN's website. It defines the precise limits of the extended continental shelf area around the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
The islands are all British overseas territories, although ownership is disputed by Argentina. The Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown said: "Successful completion of this process will confirm the boundaries of the UK's jurisdiction over its continental shelf, thus ensuring our sovereign rights to manage the shelf for future generations."
The UK document deals concisely with the Argentinian counter-claim, stating: "The UK has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime area."
The submission is one of several last-minute claims for millions of square kilometres of the ocean floor that have arrived at the UN's New York office before an international deadline – 13 May – for demarcating possession of extended continental shelves.
In the past two weeks, Ghana, Pakistan, Norway, South Africa, Iceland, Denmark, France, Vietnam, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Kenya and others have delivered boxes of documents to the UN in the hope of securing valuable oil, gas and mineral resources around the world.
The hefty files of detailed paperwork – one Australian submission ran to 80 volumes – are the culmination of years of underwater exploration by each state, plotting submarine contours that mark the outer edges of the continental shelf.
The complex rules of the UN convention on the law of the sea allow states to extend their control and exploitation of the seabed beyond the traditional 200 nautical mile limit and up to 350 nautical miles offshore.The precise extent of each claim frequently involves establishing the foot of an underwater continental slope, thousands of feet down in the chilly, dark oceans – and then measuring 60 miles outward.
Some claims, usually the legacies of unresolved international conflicts, are mutually exclusive, generating fresh diplomatic unease along the fissure lines of ancient boundary disputes.
As well as the overlapping claims for the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic, a dispute has emerged between France and Canada over claims to be presented for the seabed surrounding St Pierre and Miquelon, a small archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland. The French have also raised hackles by claiming the seabed near their Pacific island territories.
The 13 May deadline applies only to those states that were signatories of the original treaty 10 years ago. Other states, which signed later, have more time left to submit their claims.
The US has still not ratified the UN convention, but the prospect of neighbouring countries such as Canada and Russia carving up the seabed for exploration is rapidly shifting opinion in Washington.
Greenpeace and other marine environmental groups have derided the process as a series of colonial land grabs. Britain has submitted several major claims, all in the Atlantic. They are around Ascension Island, in the waters near the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and in the Hatton-Rockall Basin to the west of Scotland.
The UK has signalled its interest in the continental shelf that slopes away from the British Antarctic Territory. All territorial claims at the south pole are, however, formally frozen by the Antarctic Treaty, to which the UK is a signatory.
Britain, France, Spain and Ireland have also lodged a shared submission for a 31,000 square mile tract of the ocean floor on the edge of the Bay of Biscay.
 
If people in Texas vote to join Mexico they should be able to. Likewise Kosovo, Lithuania, Tibet, Taiwan should be allowed to decide what country they are in.

What is wrong with people having self determination?
 
If people in Texas vote to join Mexico they should be able to. Likewise Kosovo, Lithuania, Tibet, Taiwan should be allowed to decide what country they are in.

What is wrong with people having self determination?
Actualy no. If Texas decides to be part of mexico, then the US government has the right and duty to kick the cessasionist asses. Beacuse just as there is a rigth to selfdetermination, there is also the state's right to territorial integrity.

Also, first, self determination is a right for a distinct people to rule themselves, not to chose to be rule by another people. Second, self determination can only be claimed by a juridicaly diferent "people" (a diferent culture subjet of opression or domination), recogniced as such. Niether the texans are a diferent people than the rest of the US, nor the falklanders are a diferent people than the british.
 
I absolutely disagree with all these people who claim self determination for people who have no right to the land. There are numerous cases of this in Europe that have touched me deeply one being our own home village in Cyprus now Northern Cyprus that was taken over by Turkey and the lands confiscated from the original inhabitants who have been living there for thousands of years.

Our own family home was sold to British settlers without real title and the village my mother and grandmother lived very peacefully has become a retirement village for the settlers. They do not care that they have stolen other peoples land and paid a pittance for this .

Self Determination for people who claim to be a majority will create a bloodbath in many societies in the world. Half of the United Kingdom and many parts of Europe with large immigrant populations can set up new countries within a country causing the complete destruction of Europe and our way of life.
 
It appears that today, as has been the case for thousands of years, whichever group is more powerful, tends to win these disagreements.

Right now (and since shortly after the new world was discovered), the British are more powerful than Argentina. So it appears that the Falklands (so named long before the French took them over and then a Spanish name was given) are British.

I don't see why there is even a question.

(For more information/related examples: see "Gibraltar".)
 
Yawn.

I don't believe the native peoples who lived on the land before the Spanish invasion ever really wanted the place to be Argentina.

Perhaps Argentines should consider returning the entire country to the remaining few indigenous inhabitants whose relatives managed to survive the government sponsored massacres of the 1800s.

You can't have it both ways.
 
Napoleon said:
It appears that today, as has been the case for thousands of years, whichever group is more powerful, tends to win these disagreements.

Right now (and since shortly after the new world was discovered), the British are more powerful than Argentina. So it appears that the Falklands (so named long before the French took them over and then a Spanish name was given) are British.

I don't see why there is even a question.

(For more information/related examples: see "Gibraltar".)

Exactly! the bullies always have the upper hand since the world is a world so conflict must be resolved by force is the only way....how little we advanced through the ages
 
Yawn.

I don't believe the native peoples who lived on the land before the Spanish invasion ever really wanted the place to be Argentina.

Which natives would those be.

Perhaps Argentines should consider returning the entire country to the remaining few indigenous inhabitants whose relatives managed to survive the government sponsored massacres of the 1800s.

You can't have it both ways.

We don't have to return anything since the land is already theirs as much as of any other argentine.
 
A note from yanquimike in his blog about this topic which maybe is of interest for some USA expats reading this thread.

The Lexington Incident

malvinusa.jpg


The Malvinas war and the UK's dispute over its sovereignty bores me.

As I tried to show in my little post last month, the United Kingdom signed at least 3 treaties recognizing that the islands belong to Spain then Argentina before taking them by force in 1833, deporting all the Argentines, and transplanting Brits there to replace them. End of Story.

In my fact checking, however, I ran across the bizarre story of the USS Lexington and the United States destruction of the Argentine colony. I had never heard a word of this before.

Not only is the story absolutely fascinating but the illegal yanqui smashing of the Malvinas appears to be the cause of the whole sad chain of events leading to the British theft and West-Bank style repopulation, to the 1982 war, to the events of today.

It's got a cast of characters that could be pulled right out of the current West Wing, international terrorists (um...pirates!) and is filled with last-gasp colonial meddling by a dying empire. A tale of our times, if you'll only suspend a little disbelief.

It's all been written before (like I said, I only learned about it while wiki/googling only 3 weeks ago) but I gotta write it again.

I hope you enjoy it... 'cause it's gonna take up a lot of this blog's time.
 
Also more important than who started it is why it was started. Fishing rights are a major source of conflict in the area still today.
 
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