British Foreign Secretary David Cameron will visit the Falkland Islands this week to “reiterate the U.K.’s commitment to uphold the Islanders’ right of self-determination,” the U.K. government said on Sunday.
The trip comes amid a renewed push from Argentina over the sovereignty of the contested territory.
London and Buenos Aires went to war over the islands for 10 weeks in 1982. Located approximately 500 kilometers off Argentina’s coast, the remote archipelago remains a U.K. territory, though Argentina claims it as its own.
Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain a self-governing U.K. Overseas Territory in a 2013 referendum.
“The Falkland Islands are a valued part of the British family, and we are clear that as long as they want to remain part of the family, the issue of sovereignty will not be up for discussion,” Cameron said in a statement.
After his Falklands trip, Cameron will travel to Paraguay, to Brazil for the G20 summit, and then to New York to visit the United Nations “ahead of the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
