British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meets with Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (unseen) in Beirut, Lebanon February 1, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister David Cameron vowed on Monday to help protect the Falkland Islands as long as they wanted to remain under British control despite attempts by Argentina's new leader to reopen negotiations on their sovereignty.
Argentina has sought to resume talks on the Falklands, over which Britain and Argentina fought a brief war in 1982, but Britain says that is not on the table as long as the island's inhabitants want to remain British.
"As long as the Falkland Islands want to be part of the UK family, they are absolutely welcome to be that, to be part of that family," Cameron told reporters on a visit to the Falklands.
"And we will support them, and back them and help protect and defend them, absolutely, as far as I'm concerned, for as long as they want. And I hope that's for a very, very long time, possibly forever."
Argentine President Javier Milei, who took office in November, has said Buenos Aires should try to take back the islands, known in Argentina as Islas Malvinas, through diplomatic channels.
In 2013, Falklands residents voted almost unanimously in a referendum to remain under British rule and keep the archipelago in the south Atlantic ocean a British overseas territory.
Cameron paid his respects at a memorial in Port Stanley to those who died in the Falklands War, which claimed the lives of 255 British and 649 Argentine personnel.
"Of course, we want to have good relations with Buenos Aires, with the Argentine government," Cameron, who met Milei last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, told reporters.
"The new government, I think, have taken some positive steps and we'll have good relations with them. But it will never be at the expense of the wishes of the Falkland Islanders."
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar, editing by Elizabeth Piper and Ed Osmond)
