Crimea referendum worthless as Falklands poll, says Argentina
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Version 0 of 1. The Argentinian president, Cristina Fernández, who has been campaigning for the Falkland Islands to become part of Argentina, said last week's referendum in Crimea was as worthless as a vote held last year over the British territory in the South Atlantic. Fernández has been increasingly vocal about Argentina's claim to the archipelago, a British overseas territory over which Britain and Argentina fought a war in 1982. "This referendum (in Crimea) is worthless," Fernández said, speaking through an interpreter at a news conference with the French president, François Hollande. "We can't simply defend the integrity of Crimea and not the Malvinas," she added. Britain claims that Russia has broken international law and violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine by annexing Crimea. Residents of the Malvinas – as the Falklands are called in Spanish – voted almost unanimously to stay under British rule in a referendum in March 2013. Britain asserted its rule over the islands, which lie off Argentina's southern coast, in 1833 despite Argentina's claim that it inherited them from the Spanish upon independence and that Britain expelled an Argentine population. "What is the value of a referendum in an overseas colony that is 14,000km from the United Kingdom?" Fernández said. The Falklands war, in which about 650 Argentinians and 255 Britons died before Argentina surrendered, is widely remembered in Argentina as a humiliating mistake by the dictatorship in power at the time. Most Latin American countries and many other developing nations have voiced support for Argentina, which has stepped up its demands since London-listed companies started drilling for oil and natural gas off the Falklands' craggy coastline. Fernández said: "We should support the integrity of all countries. At the end of the day the Malvinas have always been Argentine while Crimea belonged to the Soviet Union and was handed to the Ukrainians by (former Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev." Russian's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on 14 March said Crimea meant more to Russia than the Falklands meant to Britain. |