Analysts are questioning the paper’s motivation as it has been at loggerheads with the British government over the past months over the phone-hacking scandal while its chief boss Rupert Murdoch cannot lay claim to British patriotism as a justification for the publication of the letter because he is American.
The letter addressed to Argentine president Christian Fernandez de Kirchner was published exclusively in Buenos Aires Herald in both English and Spanish on January 4.
It came after Kirchner published her own letter to the British Prime Minister David Cameron in several British newspapers on Wednesday calling for negotiations with London over the sovereignty of the Malvinas islands, which Argentina says Britain has illegally occupied.
Kirchner said that Britain should begin negotiations over the islands, which were “forcibly stripped” from Argentina exactly 180 years ago, on 3 January 1833 stressing the Royal Navy expelled the Argentineans who originally lived on the territory and replaced them with British settlers at the time.
She also raised the 1960 United Nations’ resolution stressing “the necessity of ‘bringing to an end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations’” and the 1965 General Assembly resolution “adopted, with no votes against) not even by the United Kingdom)” that considered the Malvinas a colonial case.
However, The Sun warned Kirchner in the letter that “claims that 180 years ago Argentina was “stripped” of the Falkland Islands are unfounded” and that the “British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands dates back to 1765 – before the Republic of Argentina even existed.”
“In the name of our millions of readers, and to put it another way: “Hands Off!” the paper warned Kirchner.
The letter by The Sun led to protests in Buenos Aires during which copies of the paper were set on fire.
The letter is seen as especially controversial as the paper openly claims to be representing millions of its readership in a clear intervention in a long-standing political dispute in favor of the British government while no official poll from its audience backs the claim.
AMR/HE
Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/05/281904/uk-paper-malvinas-move-raises-brows/