Argentine president ambushes Cameron

Prime Minister David Cameron with the Argentinian President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Reuters)

In a moment of unusual diplomatic drama, David Cameron yesterday confronted President Cristina Fernandez about their Falklands Islands dispute, suggesting to her that her recent remonstrations had been "unacceptable", sources said.

The encounter, which happened in a corridor of the convention centre where the G20 summit was taking place, ended on a fractious note, moreover. Ms Fernandez tried to press a large envelope "stuffed with documents" into the hands of Mr Cameron; he refused it.

It seemed as if the altercation may have been deliberately staged by Ms Fernandez. Last week she used a meeting of an obscure committee of the UN in New York to berate Britain for refusing to enter negotiations on the future of the islands. At the end of that meeting, members of a Falklands delegation tried to give a letter to her and she refused to take it.

Witnesses of yesterday's Cameron-Fernandez face-off said she seemed to want to make sure that her officials captured her on film as she tried to foist the envelope. On it in large and easily visible letters were "United Nations" and "Malvinas", Argentina's name for the Falkland Islands.