Britain has urged Interpol to reject Argentina’s applications to arrest people linked to a large oil development off the Falkland Islands, arguing that the “red notice” requests are politically motivated.
Officials in London have written to the international policing body’s headquarters in Lyon, contending that requests targeting individuals involved in the project, including British citizens, should be regarded as political.
According to informed sources, the UK government is uneasy about what those sources described as an attempt to intimidate workers and companies into abandoning the Falklands.
UK officials say friction over the sovereignty of the British overseas territory has reached its highest level since the war with Argentina in 1982, and London has pressed Interpol for urgent assurances.
In the letter, the UK asked Interpol to handle Argentine detention requests with caution, sources said.
Andrea Clausen, chief executive of the Falkland Islands government, described Argentina’s use of Interpol as a threat, adding: “One would hope that Interpol wouldn’t necessarily take action.”
She said that those with an interest in the matter had examined certain sections of Interpol’s constitution “to see what we think it could mean”.
Interpol’s reply to the UK, it is understood, said the organisation would honour article 3 of its constitution, which bars it from any intervention or activity of a political character.
Interpol screens red notices, which ask authorities to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition. When such notices are circulated to enforcement agencies, each member country decides whether to act on them. Close to 20,000 were issued last year.
The Sea Lion project in the north Falklands basin of the south Atlantic could triple the islands’ GDP. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has vowed to block it, and his government’s strategy includes seeking to criminalise those taking part and deterring other investors.
Milei has opened criminal proceedings against the Israeli company Navitas and its British partner Rockhopper Exploration, the two core firms behind the offshore Sea Lion venture.
A draft national sovereignty bill put before Argentina’s congress would widen the scope of sanctions to cover affiliates of those companies, financial intermediaries, shareholders and suppliers. The bill also contains clauses that could target people working in the Falklands fishing industry, which forms a large share of the islands’ economy.
The archipelago lies 300 miles (500km) east of Argentina’s southern Patagonian coast. Oil and fisheries workers on the islands, known in Argentina as Las Malvinas, are understood to fear being targeted if they travel, especially to South America, where support exists for Buenos Aires’s sovereignty claim.
Argentina is also expected to escalate the dispute within 24 hours by requesting arbitration over the oil project under annexe VII of the UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos). On 28 September, Milei handed the UK a two-week deadline to halt the project or face such legal action. That deadline lapsed on Monday, and Argentinian newspapers said an arbitration application would follow.
In the arbitration, Buenos Aires will claim that the UK is in breach of a UN resolution that invites the parties to negotiate over the sovereignty dispute and to refrain from “unilateral modifications”. It will seek a binding ruling that Britain must stop the drilling. UK government sources, however, are confident that Unclos will not step into a sovereignty dispute.
Addressing constituents at a public meeting on Monday evening, Falkland Islands assembly member Dean Dent said the UK government was working hard on a tough response to Argentina’s Unclos threat. “The UK government has assembled quite an in-depth team of legal advisers, KCs – that is the first step,” he said.
He said four recent similar cases involving sovereignty had been taken to Unclos and that the tribunal disregarded all four, because each rested on a sovereignty question rather than a maritime one.
Britain is expected to adopt an increasingly muscular approach towards Argentina in the coming days. The prime minister, Andy Burnham, told parliament on Monday that he had raised the issue, and “the clear and declared will of the islanders to remain British”, with the US president, Donald Trump.
Argentina continues to claim sovereignty over the roughly 700 islands and has dismissed a 2013 referendum in which 99.8% of the 3,600 residents voted to remain a British territory, with only three votes against.
The 74-day 1982 conflict, triggered by an invasion ordered by Argentina’s dictator Gen Leopoldo Galtieri, ended with the surrender of Argentinian forces. It cost the lives of 649 Argentinian military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland islanders.
Despite Interpol’s reassurance about how it screens red notice requests, concerns remain that Argentina could convince the organisation’s member states that its requests are not political but rooted in domestic legislation.
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