Pope Francis has been called on to intervene in the long-running dispute between Argentina and Britain over the Falkland Islands.
Argentina’s president Cristina Kirchner said she asked the Argentinean-born Pope to help defuse the row between the two countries when she visited the Vatican.
She asked Francis for his intercession to ‘facilitate dialogue’ over the islands, which Argentina claims and calls the Malvinas.
‘I asked for his intervention to avoid problems that could emerge from the militarisation of Great Britain in the south Atlantic,’ Mrs Kirchner told journalists after having lunch with the Pope.
‘We want a dialogue and that’s why we asked the Pope to intervene so that the dialogue is successful.’
It was not immediately known how Francis responded to Mrs Kirchner’s request.
Just last week, prime minister David Cameron said he ‘respectfully’ disagreed with the Pope’s views on the Falklands. Argentina and Britain fought a war in 1982 over the islands.
When 76-year-old Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was quoted as saying Britain ‘usurped’ the remote islands.
At a mass last year, he told Argentinean veterans of the Falklands War: ‘We come to pray for all who have fallen, sons of the homeland who went out to defend their mother, the homeland, and to reclaim what is theirs.’
In a referendum a week ago, the Falkland islanders voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory.
Mrs Kirchner is the first head of state to meet the new Pope. She presented him with a mate gourd and straw for drinking traditional Argentinean tea.
The two also kissed, and Mrs Kirchner said afterwards: ‘Never in my life has a Pope kissed me!’
