Argentina's Mauricio Macri Continues Push to Reclaim Malvinas from UK

Argentina’s new conservative government, which the right-wing press praised as a neoliberal beacon in South America, has said that it will press on with the bid to reclaim the Malvinas Islands, revealing a continuity with the socialist predecessor.

British authorities had hoped that with the exit of the left-wing former president, Cristina Kirchner, under whom ties between Buenos Aires and London frayed, the matter could be put to bed and relations improved.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the change in political direction for the country after the December election was the chance to develop a “more mature relationship” with Buenos Aires.

ANALYSIS: Macri's Cabinet Signals Radical Departure from Kirchnerism

But it appears the new, pro-business president, Mauricio Macri, will not back down to the claim on the isolated archipelago.

"Argentina renews its firm commitment to peacefully settling its differences, to international law and multilateralism,” the Argentine foreign ministry announced on Sunday.

It added that the government “invited the United Kingdom to resume as soon as possible negotiations aimed at settling fairly and definitively, the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich islands and surrounding territorial seas.”

SPECIAL: Malvinas – A Colonial Enclave in the South Atlantic

Known to the British as the Falklands, the Malvinas Islands have been held by the U.K. since 1833, when British warships seized the archipelago. Argentina has long disputed British claims to the islands. In 1982 tensions boiled over into a short war that claimed close to 900 lives and ended with the U.K. holding on to the islands.

In October, member states of Union of South American Nations “unanimously” backed Argentina's sovereign claim to the Malvinas Islands, according to Daniel Filmus, the Argentine official in charge of the claim.