Falkland Islanders vote to stay British

Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a British oversees territory. Source: AAP

FALKLAND Islanders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a British oversees territory in a referendum designed to send a strong message to Argentina, which earlier derided the poll as illegal.

Some 92 per cent of the islands' 1,672 eligible voters turned out to deliver a 98.8 per cent "yes" vote in favour of staying an internally self-governing British territory, election officials in the capital Port Stanley announced.

Only three votes out of 1,517 were cast against the islands remaining British.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague welcomed the result, saying it "demonstrates more clearly than ever the Falkland Islanders' wish to remain an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom.

"We have always been clear that we believe in the rights of the Falklands people to determine their own futures and to decide on the path they wish to take," he said in a statement on Tuesday.

"It is only right that, in the twenty-first century, these rights are respected.

"All countries should accept the results of this referendum and support the Falkland Islanders as they continue to develop their home and their economy."

International observers - from Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Paraguay, the United States and Uruguay - monitored the polling stations.

The resounding "yes" result, delivered at around 10:30pm on the remote South Atlantic archipelago sparked unprecedented celebrations.

"There's so much noise here, it's huge," Legislative Assembly member Barry Elsby told AFP.

"There are hundreds of people outside the cathedral, celebrating, singing and waving flags.

Elsby called it a "tremendous point in time" for the islands which "sends a message around the world".

He said that Argentina would be "very frightened" because "this process was democratic".

"They can't dismiss it," he added.

Argentina, which invaded the islands in 1982 before its troops were ousted by a British task force after a short but bloody war, maintained its dismissive line on the vote.

"It's a manoeuvre with no legal value, which has neither been convened nor supervised by the United Nations," said Alicia Castro, Argentina's ambassador to London.

"We respect their way of life, their identity. We respect that they want to continue being British, but the territory they inhabit is not British," she told Buenos Aires radio station La Red.

Buenos Aires has stepped up its sovereignty claims against the backdrop of the discovery of potentially valuable oil reserves in the territorial waters of the islands it calls "Las Malvinas", some 400km away from the Argentine coast.

Britain has held the Falklands since 1833 but Buenos Aires maintains that the barren islands are occupied Argentinian territory.

Buenos Aires claims the islanders are an "implanted" colonial population and thus do not have the right to self-determination.

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