Free Republic

In his talks with President Obama in March, David Cameron reportedly gained assurances from the White House that Washington would stop pressing for negotiations between London and Buenos Aires over the sovereignty of the Falklands. If such an assurance was given, it was surely worthless. As Mercosur Press (South Atlantic News Agency) has just reported, the State Department is once again calling for UK-Argentina negotiations, ahead of next week’s Organisation of American States summit in Bolivia: “Our policy is unchanged. We believe that this is a bilateral issue that needs to be worked out directly between Argentina and the United...

Bristling with cutting-edge technology and carrying an awesome array of weaponry, the Royal Navy’s new destroyer HMS Dauntless is said to be one of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful warships. But the £1 billion ($1.61 billion) vessel was left helpless and stranded—when a £10 ($16) fuse apparently blew. Dauntless was left without power and plunged into darkness. According to one source on board, the ship was ‘drifting for several minutes’ before the fault was corrected. No official cause for the problem has been given, but Navy insiders suggested that the fuse blew because a complicated water-cooling system had not been...

Alicia Castro tried to pull Argentina's immediate neighbours into the dispute, claiming UK diplomatic and business relations could be damaged if the islands were not handed over to Buenos Aires. She said Las Malvinas – Argentina's name for the Falklands – would be better off if they cut their ties with the UK.

Argentina has riled the Falkland Islands by broadcasting a political advert filmed on the territory without authorisation. The advert features an Argentine athlete training in the Falklands ahead of the London Olympics in July. It ends with the slogan: "To compete on English soil, we train on Argentine soil." Falklands legislator Ian Hansen dismissed it as a piece of "cheap and disrespectful propaganda". The advert - broadcast in Argentina on Wednesday night - is the latest measure by Argentina to reassert its claim to the British overseas territory it calls the Malvinas.

Life on Royal Navy's Falklands-bound HMS Dauntless It is one of the Royal Navy's most advanced and powerful warships, now on its way to the other side of the world; destination - the Falkland Islands. HMS Dauntless is the largest destroyer ever built for the Royal Navy, made from nearly 3,000 tonnes of steel. Its wide hull helps to support its two massive radar. This Type 45 destroyer is radically different in design from earlier warships. The sleek, angled lines means it appears no larger than a fishing boat on another ship's radar. It is the navy's first stealth warship....

30 years ago today, one of the RAF’s greatest missions of all time: a long range surprise attack to the Falklands April 30, 2012 At 22.30, on Apr. 30, 1982, the first engine of some 13 Hadley Page Victor K2 Tanker aircraft spooled into life and announced the start of one of the RAF’s greatest missions of all time. It all started a few weeks previously, when some Argentinean scrap metal merchants had claimed some remote British Islands called South Georgia in the name of Argentina. It culminated in General Leopold Galtiere invading the British dependency of the Falkland Islands...

While President Barack Obama's latest gaffe at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena was largely overlooked by the national media, fixated as it is on the Secret Service hooker scandal, it was not lost elsewhere -- especially in the United Kingdom and in Argentina. The gaffe, if that is what it was -- and not a premeditated slap at the British -- came during the joint press conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos after the conference. A Colombian television reporter asked Obama why it was that neither the issues of Cuba nor the "Malvinas" were taken up at...

Barack Obama has no interest in standing with Britain over the Falklands ... Barack Obama's latest knife in the back for Britain – and there have been many - should be a wake-up call for David Cameron, whose recent trip to Washington was an undignified exercise in hero-worship toward a Left-wing president who doesn't even like the British. The prime minister should understand that Barack Obama is no friend of Britain and never will be. And nor is his Secretary of State, who has actively backed Argentina's calls for UN-brokered negotiations between London and Buenos Aires over the sovereignty of...

Does U.S. President Obama have a foreign policy or should we call it a "dangerous farcical policy." Is he even control of the White House? By now, most people have heard the story of how, "11 Secret Service agents" and "as many as 10 U.S. military personnel," hired prostitutes, drank alcohol, and possibly used illicit drugs -- all in "security preparation" for the president to attend the Summit of the Americas in Columbia. Besides the security debacle, Obama's diplomatic effort, "wasn't exactly smooth sailing." But there's a subtle clincher to Obama's ridiculous Columbia trip which belies his true incompetency, a...

Yesterday Bryan Preston covered Barack Obama’s remarks on the Falkland Islands at the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. When asked about Argentina’s claim to the British-ruled islands, Obama said the U.S. would continue to observe a “neutral” stance, adding that “this is not something that we typically intervene in.” Taking a leaf out of the Sean Penn guide to diplomacy, he also attempted to refer to the Islands by their Argentinian name, Las Malvinas. Obama’s response attracted little interest here in Britain, and while the Smartest President Ever mistakenly called the islands the Maldives, I didn’t find Obama’s intention...

Diplomacy: After a weekend of cavorting in Colombia, the White House was caught flat-footed by Argentina's takeover of a big oil company whose loss will hike gas prices, harm Spain and slam U.S. investors. Lucky us. Never was a response to a global outrage more mealy-mouthed than the one from the U.S. after Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, standing under a portrait of Evita Peron, announced a brazen grab for YPF, the Argentine oil company that's 57% owned by Spain's Repsol. Markets fell, world leaders denounced the violation of contracts and economically battered Spain rallied European Union support. But...

President Obama erred during a speech at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when attempting to call the disputed archipelago by its Spanish name. Instead of saying Malvinas, however, Mr Obama referred to the islands as the Maldives, a group of 26 atolls off that lie off the South coast of India. Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine president, has renewed her country's sovereignty claim to the Falklands in the build-up to the 30th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands, which triggered the Falklands War, on April 2. She has accused David Cameron of maintaining a "colonial enclave"...

Thirty years ago this Monday, Argentine marines invaded the Falkland Islands, killed or captured its British defenders and declared the islands to be Argentine territory: Les Malvinas. Britain dispatched a naval "task force" to regain them less than a week later. The Falklands War had begun. According to newly released documents from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., the U.S. almost took sides against its most important ally, driven by the diplomatic maneuvering of Secretary of State Alexander Haig... The most striking revelation from the meeting is the degree to which Haig's compromise favored the Argentines. The minutes are...

A group of British and American banks have been threatened with legal action by the Argentine government for advising and writing research reports about companies involved in the Falkland Islands’ £1.6bn oil industry. In what amounts to the start of a new trade war between the UK and Argentina, the banks - understood to include the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Capital and Goldman Sachs - have been warned they face criminal and civil action in Argentine courts. The threats were made in a series of letters sent to as many as 15 banks by the Argentine embassy in London...

Peru cancels visit by British frigate over Falkland Islands Peru has cancelled an upcoming visit by a Royal Navy frigate to the country as tensions between Britain and Latin America mount over the Falkland Islands. HMS Montrose was scheduled to dock at Peru's El Callao naval base this week, but the visit has been cancelled by Peru in a show of solidarity with Argentina. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has criticised Britain’s territorial rights to the Falkland Islands, known in Latin America as the Malvinas. The dispute comes ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war in April,...

Pink Floyd star Roger Waters has reportedly stated that Britain should return the Falkland Islands, saying "Las Malvinas belong to Argentina". In an interview with Chilean television, Waters, who is on tour in South America, allegedly said he was "as ashamed as I possibly could be of our colonial past ... When we were out raping and plundering and stealing". The reported comments came as Argentina's industry minister called for all British imports to be banned as tensions escalate between the two countries ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands conflict. A journalist for the Chilean TVN state channel...

<p>HISTORY has left Argentines with more than their share of economic trauma. Having twice suffered destructive bouts of hyperinflation in the late 1980s, they are sensitive to rising prices. When they spot inflation their instinct is to dump the peso and buy dollars. But after the economy collapsed in 2001-02, horror at mass unemployment temporarily eclipsed the public’s fear of inflation. That has been the successful political calculation of the president, Cristina Fernández, and her late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner. For years they stoked an overheating economy with expansionary policies. Faced with the resulting rise in inflation, their officials resorted to price controls—and to an extraordinarily elaborate deception to conceal the rise.</p>

The Falkland Islands put on a show of strength against Argentine aggression and outspoken left-wing Hollywood actor Sean Penn - with a mile-long convoy of 4x4s. Dozens of Union Flag-waving Falklanders snaked their way out of the capital Stanley yesterday afternoon in a patriotic blur of red, white and blue. The procession, which looked at times like a summer carnival parade, is unlikely to scare Argentina into not launching an attack on the dispute archipelago. It is also doubtful it will force Penn, who has consistently backed Argentina in recent days, to keep his mouth shut. But it does act...

Hollywood actor Sean Penn has criticised Prince William's deployment to the Falklands in a second attack on Britain in two days. Madonna's ex-husband was condemned as 'moronic' by Tory MP and former Army officer Patrick Mercer yesterday for claiming Britain's continuing hold on the Falklands was 'colonialist, ludicrous and archaic'. But the left-leaning actor showed he cannot keep his mouth shut over the islands by accusing the UK of 'insensitivity' for posting William to the disputed South Atlantic territory and labelling Britain a colonial dinosaur for the second day running.

Remember when Barack Obama promised to restore our standing with America’s allies and exercise “smart power” in diplomacy? Good times, good times. In the latest dispute over the Falkland Islands, Obama has failed to support our closest ally on the world stage even after their military and diplomatic support for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in what the Telegraph’s Nile Gardiner called another knife in the back: First, military weakness is provocative. Argentina ramped up its aggressive rhetoric and diplomatic efforts to reclaim the Falklands only after P.M. Cameron announced massive cuts to the Royal Navy and British ground...