Argentina and Britain: heading for the UN?

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner told a group of parliamentarians and Falkland war veterans that Britain was "militarizing the South Atlantic one more time."

She told the veterans, "We will present a complaint to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as this militarizing poses a grave danger to international security."

Britain's Foreign Office issued a pretty standard response, "The people of the Falkland Islands are British out of choice. They are free to determine their own future and there will be no negotiations with Argentina over sovereignty unless the islanders wish it."

End of story? No. There is political mileage for Kirchner in this Falkland War 30th anniversary verbal sparring, and, as Fergal Keane, notes for the BBC, this is another step in a "campaign of diplomatic attrition."