The visit of the Falkland Islands Tourist Board (FITB, for its acronym in English), visited Maldonado before having passed through the Rural del Prado 2022 fair, where they were installed at the United Kingdom stand.
For the eighth year, the British pavilion was at the Rural del Prado, a fair that took place between September 9 and 18. The FITB delegation toured the country with agricultural producers and commercial operators from the disputed archipelago. The Maldonado was accompanied by the honorary consul for Maldonado and Rocha, Andrew Beare, and the mayor of the municipality of Maldonado, Andrés Rapetti.
The archipelago is claimed by Argentina as its own territory. The call Question of the Falkland Islands, is understood as the sovereignty dispute between the Argentine Republic and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas Islands, Georgias del Sur, Sandwich del Sur and the surrounding maritime spaces. It has its origin on January 3, 1833 when the United Kingdom occupied the territory, expelled the Argentine authorities, preventing their return, as well as the settlement of Argentines from the continental territory, according to the official position of the Argentine State.
Argentine protest
The Embassy of Argentina in Uruguay wrote a letter to Rapetti in which it is read that, for the neighboring country, the FITB authorities are “illegitimate” and recalled that the Malvinas Question is of “extreme sensitivity for our country”.
“It constitutes a permanent and inalienable objective of the Argentine people, as expressed in our National Constitution through the First Transitory Clause, being, in addition, an issue in which our Uruguayan brothers have always accompanied us.”
“As a recent sign of the permanent Uruguayan support for the claim Argentina, in the sessions of the Special Committee on Decolonization this year, the The Uruguayan delegate stated that ‘Uruguay has maintained, in all the forums in which has participated, a position of invariable and consistent principle, which today we return to reaffirm: their conviction and commitment to the sovereign rights of the Republic Argentina over the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and the spaces surrounding seas’”, continues the consular document.
He also recalled that on August 17, 2022, the Uruguayan Senate unanimously approved a declaration recognizing the fallen veterans in Malvinas, and the 763 Uruguayan volunteers who enlisted to defend sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, and offered their support. once again to the claim against the United Kingdom.
First, these were not official delegations at all, something they made clear at the beginning. When we had the first meeting with the Embassy authorities, we told them that we did not want to establish any type of political link with the islands, but [que se trataba] of an approach from the cultural point of view linked to ecological issues, something that we made clear from the beginning”, explained Rapetti regarding this controversy.
He described the note from the Argentine ambassador, Alberto Iribarne, as “inappropriate” for using qualifiers towards the FITB delegation as “illegitimate”.
