LONDON: Britain summoned Argentina’s ambassador to London on Monday after masked men ransacked the offices of a shipping company in Buenos Aires, a move the Foreign Office alleged was aimed at deterring ships from visiting the disputed Falkland Islands.
The Foreign Office said the shipping firm, agents for a cruise company, had been attacked on Nov. 19, causing the cancelation of a planned visit to the islands some 300 miles (482 km) off Argentina’s coast.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has launched a wide-ranging diplomatic offensive to try to assert Argentina’s claim to the islands 30 years after the Falklands war, angering Britain which says the islanders want to continue to be governed by London.
The Foreign Office, which labelled the shipping office incident a “violent act of intimidation,” said it had summoned Alicia Castro, Argentina’s envoy to London, after earlier invitations had been ignored.
A British official with knowledge of the matter said Britain was concerned it had not received assurances that British-linked firms would not be attacked again. The official said Britain was also worried the attackers may have had state backing.
“It is shameful that elements within a large country like Argentina should seek to strangle the economy of a small group of islands. Such action benefits nobody and only condemns those who lend it support,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.
“We were disappointed that it was necessary formally to summon the ambassador into the Foreign Office. We made several attempts to arrange for a less formal meeting, each of which the Argentine embassy declined,” the statement said.
The Argentine embassy was not immediately available for comment, but the British official said after the meeting that Castro had been “very cross” to have been summoned and that she had accused the Foreign Office of “wasting her time.”
The British official said Britain believed Argentina had been contacting cruise companies and other firms to try to pressure them into not doing business with the Falkland Islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas.
Fernandez has accused London of maintaining “colonial enclaves” and has demanded the two countries sit down to discuss the disputed islands’ sovereignty — a suggestion Britain has rejected.
Lawmakers in Buenos Aires province passed a bill in August banning ships involved in business activities off the Falkland Islands from mooring at its ports, part of Argentina’s drive to discourage oil exploration in the area.
Argentina had already banned ships flying the Falklands flag from entering the country’s ports. The regional Mercosur trade group backed the move.
UK summons Argentine envoy over Falklands “intimidation“
UK summons Argentine envoy over Falklands “intimidation“
UK interior minister insists asylum reforms ‘fair’ amid blowback
- Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders
- Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow”
LONDON: Britain’s interior minister doubled down Thursday on her tough stance on immigration despite criticism from charities and unease within the ruling Labour party that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Shabana Mahmood announced that asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments.
The policy forms part of a major overhaul of migration rules announced late last year and modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system that aims to slash irregular migration to the UK.
Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum was “firm but fair,” adding she would open new and safe legal routes.
But Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow” that “risks forcing people into destitution, homelessness and exploitation while they wait for their claims to be decided.”
Mahmood’s reforms are widely seen as an attempt to stem support for the hard-right Reform UK party, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.
It has topped opinion polls for a year, in part because of the government’s failure to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats.
But her stance has also been credited with contributing to Labour losing support to the progressive Green party, which won a local election in a traditional Labour heartland last week.
Mahmood said there was a middle path between Farage’s “nightmare pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the world” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s “fairy tale of open borders.”
Her reform that makes refugee status temporary, including for accompanied children, came into force this week.
The status will be reviewed every 30 months, with refugees forced to return to their home countries once those are deemed safe.
They will also need to wait for 20 years, instead of the current five, before they can apply for permanent residency.
She also announced earlier this week that the government would stop issuing education visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
It said there had been a surge in asylum applications by students from those countries and almost 135,000 asylum seekers in total had entered the UK using legal routes since 2021.
