By Andrew Osborn
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain derided a new Argentine banknote featuring the disputed Falkland Islands as a stunt on Tuesday and said it had no intention of discussing sovereignty over the archipelago with Buenos Aires.
Tensions over the Falklands, known as Las Malvinas in Argentina, still crackle more than 30 years after Argentine forces seized them and the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher sent a task force to retake them. More than 600 Argentine servicemen and 255 British died in the brief war.
Hit by high inflation, Argentina issued a new 50-peso banknote this month described by the central bank as a reminder of the South American country's "undying claim" to Las Malvinas.
"On the issue of the 50-peso banknote, we can't stop the Argentinian government from these stunts," Hugo Swire, a minister of state at the British Foreign Office, said when asked about the note in parliament.
"It's worth a whopping 3.72 pounds ($6) according to today's exchange rate," he added. "And I think it probably has the equivalent political value."
The note features a map of the islands, 300 miles off the Argentine coast and 8,000 miles from Britain, on one side and an image of a gaucho who rebelled against British rule there in 1833 brandishing an Argentine flag on the other.
Swire said the Argentine embassy had recently sent a book and a letter to the British parliament, complaining about a lack of dialogue on sovereignty.
"It (the book) ignores the inconvenient truth that some people on the islands can trace their Falklands ancestry back through nine generations, longer than the current borders of Argentina have existed," said Swire.
There would be no sovereignty talks with Argentina in line with the islanders' own wishes, he added.