IN a speech to the Argentine Government, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced this afternoon plans to "re-open" the Buenos Aires to Falkland Islands flight route.

The Buenos Aires Herald reported that she will instruct Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman to renegotiate the flight path to the Islands, underlining that Buenos Aires be used instead of the route via Chile.

"We are going to instruct our foreign minister to renegotiate the possibility that instead of LAN flying from Chile twice a month to Río Gallegos, that there be three monthly trips, but going from Argentina, from Buenos Aires and using Aerolíneas Argentinas," the President said.

The Falkland Islands Government has not confirmed if it will give an official reaction to the 'proposal' but MLA Dick Sawle told Mercopress that the proposal was too "muddled" with errors of dates and number of flights to warrant a response. Nevertheless, if the intention was to re-open negotiations on the 1999 three side (UK, Argentina, Falklands’ government) agreement, then, “the Falkland Islands would look forward to discussing the principles agreed at that meeting which have since been abandoned by Argentina."