§ Mr. Soamesasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what talks are currently in progress with the Government of Argentina.
§ Mr. RentonNone. We are not prepared to negotiate on sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. But we remain ready to talk about practical ways of improving bilateral relations with Argentina, as we had hoped to do during the talks in Berne in July. These talks regrettably ended in deadlock because the Argentines, contrary to what had been agreed, insisted on linking discussion of the normalisation of relations with discussion of sovereignty. This remains their position.