UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has thrown
her support behind a FIFA investigation into Argentina's display of a political
banner following their World Cup semi-final victory over England.
Argentina's players held up a banner reading "Las
Malvinas son Argentinas" ("The Falkland Islands are
Argentine") after their 2-1 win, reigniting the long-running sovereignty
dispute over the South Atlantic territory.
FIFA has confirmed that its disciplinary committee is
reviewing the incident to determine whether Argentina breached regulations
prohibiting political messages during official competitions.
Responding in a video posted on X on Friday, Badenoch
reaffirmed Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands and urged FIFA to take
action.
"The Falkland Islands are British. The
Conservatives will always defend them. We know that political messaging and
slogans are banned by FIFA, so they absolutely should investigate. It was a
very silly banner," she said.
She added, "The Falkland Islands are British, and
the Conservatives will never stop defending them. We did it before, and we'd do
it again."
The UK government also backed calls for an
investigation, maintaining that the status of the Falkland Islands is not open
to debate.
A Downing Street spokesperson said, "The World
Cup might not be ours, but the Falkland Islands definitely are," while
Business Secretary Peter Kyle described the banner as "an egregious
violation" of FIFA's rules, stressing that politics should remain separate
from football.
The Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory in
the South Atlantic, have been the subject of competing sovereignty claims by
the United Kingdom and Argentina for decades.
The territorial dispute escalated into the 1982
Falklands War, a 74-day conflict that claimed the lives of 649 Argentine
personnel, 255 British servicemen, and three Falkland Islanders.
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