Global Security Newswire

The United Kingdom appears to have dispatched a nuclear-armed submarine close to a South Atlantic archipelago contested by the governments, Argentina's top diplomat said on Friday (see GSN, Feb. 3).

The ballistic missile submarine HMS Vanguard is sailing close to the Falkland Islands as part of a British armed forces detachment, the Associated Press quoted Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman as saying (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2003).

"Argentina has information that within the framework of the recent British deployment in the Malvinas Islands they sent a nuclear submarine ... to transport nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic," Timerman said, using his country's name for the island chain.

The United Kingdom has not confirmed the purported nuclear-armament placement, though Argentina had issued a request through official communication lines for verification of the move, the diplomat said. "Thus far, the U.K. refuses to say whether it's true or not," he said.

Timerman said the vessel's presence would breach a treaty intended to ban nuclear weapons from Latin America and the Caribbean.

British Ambassador to the United Nations Mark Lyall Grant said London would "not comment on the disposition of nuclear weapons, submarines."

"I don't know how he knows about submarines," the envoy said. "I certainly don't know. The whole point of nuclear submarines is that they go all around the world and you don't know where they are. That's why they're a deterrent."

A nuclear-armed submarine could only breach the nuclear weapon-free zone agreement by entering an area controlled by Argentina, he said.

The United Kingdom maintains four strategic submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 4,000 miles.

Argentina and the United Kingdom went to war in 1982 for control of the islands (Anita Snow, Associated Press/Google News, Feb. 11).