“The Falkland islanders couldn’t have spoken more clearly,” he said. “They want to remain British, and that view should be respected by everybody, including by Argentina.”
In Buenos Aires, though, Argentine officials dismissed the referendum as irrelevant, describing the dispute over the islands as a matter of sovereignty, not popular will. No vote by British “settlers,” they said, however lopsided, could trump Argentina’s historic claim to the archipelago that Argentines call Las Malvinas.
And so, at the end of the latest chapter in a push-pull over the islands dating back decades, matters appeared to stand pretty much where they had before the islanders, prodded by the Cameron government, called the referendum in response to a resurgence of nationalist fervor over the issue in Argentina. The dispute, it seemed, will continue to rumble on at the United Nations, with neither London nor Buenos Aires showing any readiness to cede ground.
The vote among the islanders on Sunday and Monday had been expected to produce the landslide that it did because most voters hold British citizenship. Of 1,517 votes cast, 1,513 were in favor of the islands’ retaining “their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom,” as the ballot question put it, and only three were opposed. Island officials recorded one vote as “unaccounted for,” meaning lost. Officials said 92 percent of eligible voters turned out.
Mr. Cameron went before television cameras to hail the result as a triumph — a rare one, electorally, for the prime minister, whose government has been trounced in several recent by-elections at home. Calling the Falklands result “the clearest possible,” he said the Argentine government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner should take “careful note.”
He added that Britain would always defend the islands, a reference to the 1982 war that Britain won after Argentine forces occupied the islands, which lie nearly 8,000 miles from Britain and barely 300 miles from Argentina in the south Atlantic. More than 900 lives were lost in the 10-week conflict, more than two-thirds of them Argentine military personnel, but some Argentine political and military officials have hinted at a new attempt to seize the islands by force. Britain has bolstered its defenses with a new military airfield, the deployment of Typhoon fighter-bombers, and a garrison with 1,200 civilian and military personnel.
Mr. Cameron said the islanders were entitled to the right of self-determination under the United Nations Charter, and were not colonialists, as Argentina has said. “The Falkland Islands may be thousands of miles away but they are British through and through, and that is how they want to stay, and people should know we will always be there to defend them,” he said. “Now other countries right across the world, I hope, will respect and revere this very, very clear result.”
Argentina’s formal response to the vote is expected this week in resolutions by both chambers of Argentina’s Congress.
Emily Schmall contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
