Argentina's president calls on UK prime minister to relinquish control of Falkland Islands

LONDON - Argentina's president is again urging Britain to relinquish control of the contested Falkland Islands.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner published a letter in Thursday's Guardian newspaper repeating calls to honour U.N. resolutions which she says back Argentina's case for what it calls the Malvinas.

"180 years ago on the same date, January 3rd, in a blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism, Argentina was forcibly stripped of the Malvinas Islands, which are situated 14,000 kilometres (8,700 miles) away from London," she says in the letter, copied to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Britain's Foreign Office says in a statement that the people of the Falklands have chosen to be British and that there can be no negotiations on sovereignty "unless and until such time as the Islanders so wish."