Argentina’s fake Falkland invasion

ARGENTINA has staged a mock invasion of the Falkland Islands in its largest military exercise for decades.

Operation Maipu, involving troops, helicopters, armoured mortar carriers and howitzers was held in August.

The secret exercise aimed to prepare forces to invade three outlying islands to ‘gain global leverage for negotiations’ over ownership of islands and their oil reserves, said the Sunday Express.

The army staged the mock exercise in a training area near Buenos Aires. It is believed an Argentinian officer shared information with a Brazilian military attache who passed it on to Britain.

A Whitehall source said the UK had a plan to address ‘unwanted Argentine attention’ and ‘three islands makes things more complicated, but certainly not insurmountable’.

General Julian Thompson, who led British land forces in the 1982 conflict, said Argentina could try to invade in the event of a Labour government. He said: ‘It is highly unlikely that [Jeremy] Corbyn would sanction military action to hold the islands and Argentina knows this.’