UK says Falklands sovereignty 'not up for negotiation'

London: The UK government insisted on Monday that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar was not up for negotiation after it said it...

London: The UK government insisted on Monday that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar was "not up for negotiation" after it said it would return a remote archipelago to Mauritius.

Britain announced on Thursday that it would hand back the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to former colony Mauritius but that it would maintain a key military base there.

Argentine foreign minister Diana Mondino reacted by saying that Argentina would "recover full sovereignty" over the Falklands -- the disputed British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean.

"We celebrate this step in the right direction," Mondino said in a post on Instagram, hailing the move as a "milestone".

"Travelling the path we have begun, with concrete actions and not empty rhetoric, we are going to recover full sovereignty over our Malvinas Islands," he said, using the Argentinian name for the archipelago