By Luisa Marquez

A British Secretary of State will visit the Falklands, said his office trying to downplay the scale at a time of tension between London and Buenos Aires for the sovereignty of the southern archipelago.

David Willets, Secretary of State for Universities and Science, left the UK yesterday and had to make a stop in the Falklands before traveling on to Antarctica to see how British scientists work. He will also stop at the islands on the way back.

 

This trip comes amid an escalation of tension between Britain and Argentina over the islands under British rule since 1833 but whose sovereignty claims Argentina makes just a few weeks the from the 30 anniversary of the war between the two countries.

 

The war was launched on April 2, 1982 with the arrival of Argentine forces in the Falklands, which lasted 74 days, left 649 Argentineans and 255 British dead and culminated on June 14 with the surrender of the South American nation, governed then by a dictatorship.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state under the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation insisted that the stop over is motivated mainly for logistical reasons. It's a trip to Antarctica. To go to Antarctica, one must travel to the Falklands (Malvinas´s British name) she said.

The spokesman said that Willets will stay a night and sleep at Malvinas and on the way back she admitted that he would probably spend the night at the home of Governor of the islands, Nigel Haywood, and there will be a formal dinner.

This tour supports further protests from Argentina, the Foreign Ministry had reported yesterday that the announced visit to the islands by March of several members of the parliamentary Defence Committee of the House of Commons as a step in the militarization of the South Atlantic reported last week at the UN.

Argentina's Foreign Ministry recalled that the visit by British lawmakers occurs for the first time in over a decade, and after sending a destroyer, a nuclear submarine and the arrival in military uniform of the Crown Prince, William, for a six weeks as a helicopter pilot search and rescue.