ARGENTINIAN President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has asked Pope Francis to intervene in support of Buenos Aires in its dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
Mrs de Kirchner had lunch with the former Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio in the Vatican after arriving in Rome to attend his inaugural papal mass.
She said: "I asked for his intervention to avoid problems that could emerge from the militarisation of Great Britain in the south Atlantic.
"We want a dialogue and that's why we asked the Pope to intervene so that the dialogue is successful."
Mrs de Kirchner, who has led Argentina for six years, has mounted a vocal campaign to renegotiate the sovereignty of the area, which Britain has resisted.
Prime Minister David Cameron said last week Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, had been wrong to say in 2012 Britain had usurped the disputed islands from Argentina.
Mr Cameron said the people of the islands had made their view clear in a referendum last week in which they overwhelmingly voted in favour of remaining British.
The left-leaning Mrs de Kirchner, and her late husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner, have had a frosty relationship with the former archbishop, who they have previously accused of taking sides with the opposition against them.
After their meeting, she said: "There was a difficult situation in 1978 when Argentina and Chile were almost at war and then John Paul II intervened and helped bring the two countries closer.
"Now the situation is different because Britain and Argentina are two democratic countries with governments elected by the people.
"The only thing we ask is we can sit down and negotiate."
Mrs De Kirchner wore a black suit and brimmed hat with a matching bow for the meeting with Pope Francis.
She called on him at his temporary home, the Vatican hotel, and the two later had lunch together.
The meeting took place yesterday, as she and other world leaders prepared to attend today's installation Mass.
Before the event, the Vatican released details, saying it would be a simplified version of the 2005 installation Mass that brought Pope Benedict XVI to the papacy.
The Vatican also released details of Francis's coat of arms and official ring, both of which are in keeping with his simple style and harking back to popes past.
The coat of arms is the same Jesuit-inspired one he used as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, while the ring was once offered to Pope Paul VI, who presided over the second half of the Second Vatican Council, the church meetings that modernised the church.
Francis is to officially receive the ring and the pallium, a woollen stole, during the installation Mass, which attracted six sovereign rulers, 31 heads of state, three princes and 11 heads of government to the Vatican.
Mrs de Kirchner led the largest delegation, with 19 members.
Controversial Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was also in Rome for the inaugural Mass. Mr Mugabe, 89, a catholic, is the subject of a travel ban by European nations.
This was put in place in protest at his human rights record in a decade of political and economic turmoil in his southern African nation. However, it does not affect his trips to the Vatican through Italy.
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