Category Archives: Falkland Islands

Argentina criticises UK refusal to talk about future of Falklands

Posted on by

Argentine foreign minister calls for improvement in bilateral relations with Britain 40 years after conflict

British-Argentine relations will be stifled so long as the UK refuses to engage in discussions about the future sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, or if both sides continue to act as if the war happened only yesterday, the Argentine foreign minister has said.

Writing in the Guardian on the 40th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands in April 1982, Santiago Cafiero called for an improvement in bilateral relations.

Continue reading...

Truss says Falklands part of ‘British family’ after China backs Argentina

Posted on by

Accord signed by Alberto Fernández and Xi Jinping at Winter Olympics also supports Chinese claim to Taiwan

Liz Truss has defended the Falklands as “part of the British family” after China backed Argentina’s claim over the South American islands.

The foreign secretary tweeted that “China must respect the Falklands’ sovereignty” after the Argentinian president, Alberto Fernández, met China’s President Xi on the fringes of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Continue reading...

The spies who hated us: reporting on espionage and the secret state

Posted on by

Our security correspondent speaks to a predecessor about an era of spooks, leaks and open hostility from MI5

It is time for morning coffee and Richard Norton-Taylor and I are discussing secrecy, deception and brown envelopes, which comes naturally to the pair of us, as past and present defence and security correspondents of the Guardian.

Norton-Taylor joined the paper in January 1973 (when, incidentally, this writer was not yet two), starting in Brussels and switching to security a few years later. The first part of his career was dominated by a series of landmark official secrecy battles.

Continue reading...

Zimbabwean who cleared Falklands mines urges rethink on 75% cut to clearance programmes

Posted on by

Cuthbert Mutukwa fears disastrous consequences for home country if UK cuts go ahead as it nears ‘mine-free’ status

A Zimbabwean man who helped clear hundreds of landmines from the Falkland Islands has urged Britain not to go ahead with cuts that would see the government pull funding from his home country just as it nears “mine-free” status.

Cuthbert Mutukwa, 42, left his family in Zimbabwe to work for two years de-mining the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory that was peppered with about 13,000 mines by Argentinian forces during the 1982 war.

Continue reading...

Antarctic expedition to renew search for Shackleton’s ship Endurance

Posted on by

Endurance22 will launch early next year with aim of locating and surveying wreck in the Weddell Sea

The location of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance has been one of the great maritime mysteries since the ship became trapped in ice and sank in 1915. Finding this symbol of the “heroic age” of polar exploration at the bottom of the Weddell Sea was long thought impossible because of the harshness of the Antarctic environment – “the evil conditions”, as Shackleton described them.

Now a major scientific expedition, announced on Monday, is being planned with a mission to locate, survey and film the wreck.

Continue reading...