BUENOS AIRES: Argentina's historic claim on the Falkland Islands is "legitimate and irrevocable," President Mauricio Macri said Tuesday at a ceremony marking the 37th anniversary of the 1982 war with Britain.
Commemorative events were being held throughout Argentina to mark the anniversary of the outbreak of the war, when Argentina's then-ruling military dictatorship sent troops to the South Atlantic archipelago, known to Argentina as the Malvinas, occupied by Britain since 1833.
"The claim to the sovereignty of the Malvinas islands is a legitimate and irrevocable claim, which unites all Argentines beyond our differences," Macri said in a speech to veterans in Buenos Aires.
The center-right president, who has forged an more moderate approach to Britain than his predecessors, said Argentina intended to push its claim by using "the tools of dialogue, confidence building and trust and respect for international law."
The 74-day conflict claimed the lives of 649 Argentine troops and 255 British forces. It ended with Argentina's surrender on June 14, 1982.
Some 500 Argentine ex-combatants have committed suicide in the years since, according to a support group, the Malvinas Combatants Association for Human Rights.
Among the events in Argentina, a "Malvinas Vigil" was held in Rio Grande, a strategic staging center for Argentine forces, 1,740 miles (2,800 kilometers) south of Buenos Aires and 360 miles west of the Falklands.
Players in Argentina's Superliga held a minute's silence before their matches at the weekend.
On Tuesday, relatives placed a commemorative plaque at the war memorial in Saint Martin Square in Buenos Aires, that read: "Argentine soldier known only to God".
The plaque was taken from the Darwin war cemetery on the islands, which had been replaced by one with the name of the fallen soldier.
The gesture follows a mission by the International Committee of the Red Cross which exhumed the remains of 121 Argentine soldiers buried in unmarked graves.
Using modern identification methods, 112 have so far been identified by an Argentine forensic team, and a planeload of relatives of the soldiers visited the graves for the first time in 2018 and again last month.
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