LONDON â€" Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is on the offensive again over Britain's refusal to hand over the Falkland Islands, the windswept South Atlantic archipelago that Argentines know as Las Malvinas.
In a new diplomatic twist, she has chosen to make her latest “give us back our islands†appeal via a paid advertisement in British newspapers.
Marking the 180th anniversary of the date on which she says Argentina was forcibly stripped of the islands in a “blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism,†Ms. Fernández de Kirchner urged Britain to negotiate the return of the disputed territory.
In an open letter on Thursday to David Cameron, the British prime minister, she said the Malvinas issue was a cause embraced by “the vast majority of peoples around the world that reject colonialism.â€
Even in Argentina, however, s keptics suggested there might be a hidden agenda behind the president's decision to revive the dispute.
Argentina's Urgente24 news Web site suggested the second-term president was seeking to cultivate a positive image ahead of midterm legislative elections this year. Ms. Fernández de Kirchner has suffered a slide in popularity as Argentina battles rising inflation and economic stagnation.
Urgente24 published a range of Twitter postings from Argentines, including some that accused their politicians of pulling the Malvinas issue out of the hat whenever they were in trouble.
Eduardo Antin, an Argentine blogger and a critic of the nationalistic stance of both Buenos Aires and London on the issue, said that in these quiet days, the president's propagandists had decided there was always a benefit in raising it.
To be fair to Ms. Fernández de Kirchner, the British may have proved irksome to her of late.
In December, Mr. Cameron's government renamed a vast swath of British Antarctic Territory, which Argentina claims as its own, as Queen Elizabeth Land in honor of the British monarch.
Argentina responded with a stiff protest note that criticized Britain's “anachronistic imperialist ambitions that hark back to ancient practices.â€
That coincided with a message from Mr. Cameron to the 2,800 British citizens who inhabit the islands, urging them to vote in a referendum this year on retaining their links with Britain. He said they would be sending a “definitive†message to the international community about the future of their homeland.
Responding to the Argentine president's open letter on Thursday, a spokesman for the British leader said the people of the Falklands had shown “a clear desire to remain British†and their interests would be protected.
Margaret Thatcher, a previous Conservative prime minister, sent a task force across the Atlantic in 1982 to recapture the Falklands from an Argentine invasion force. She rebuffed a request from her ally and friend, President Ronald Reagan, to spare the Argentines the ignominy of a total surrender, according to recently declassified papers.
The victory was widely seen as crucial to restoring her popularity a t the time.
While some in Argentina were suggesting Ms. Fernández de Kirchner might have a hidden motive, one British poster, the Labour Party town councillor Phil Rackley, pondered on Twitter:
