RUTHFULLY YOURS

Britain is gearing up for Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s funeral on Wednesday at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. As is customary in the United Kingdom, protocol is as crucial as pomp and circumstance. It was therefore par for the course that one of the issues surrounding the major event was the very carefully determined guest list.

Conspicuously absent from this list of dignitaries from countries with which the U.K. has diplomatic relations was Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In her stead, Argentinian Ambassador to Britain Alicia Castro will be invited, because Thatcher’s children said that “good manners” require it.

So far, however, the ambassador hasn’t had the “good manners” to RSVP.

Etiquette aside, it is with good reason that Kirchner is not welcome. This is not merely because her presidency has been marked by hostility toward Western allies and friendliness with the regimes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro — though this should suffice for her to be shunned.

No, the rationale behind snubbing Argentina’s first female president (the only thing she had in common with Thatcher) has to do with her current campaign to claim her country’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. And it is precisely Thatcher’s leadership during the Falklands War that is going to be the theme of her funeral, with hundreds of members of the royal armed forces taking part in the ceremonies.

The Falklands War, which lasted from April 2 to June 14, 1982, broke out when Argentinian troops invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean that has been administered by Britain since 1833.

In 1945, Argentina appealed to the newly formed United Nations in an attempt to re-establish its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which it had obtained in 1816 after gaining independence from Spain. Argentina claimed that the British had “illegally occupied” the islands in 1833.

In 1964, the U.N. passed a resolution calling on Britain and Argentina to resolve this dispute. When word got out that Britain was negotiating with Argentina over sovereignty, the Falkland Islanders were furious. They liked being British and wanted to keep it that way. As a result, the U.K. tried to get Argentina on board with furthering their self-determination. Argentina wasn’t interested. This stalemate lasted for nearly two decades, until Argentina launched the surprise military invasion.

Thatcher’s victory was just as popular among the Falkland Islanders as the British public. And it took eight full years after the war before the U.K. and Argentina resumed diplomatic relations in 1990.

This has not deterred Argentina from periodically raising the sovereignty issue. Finally, in 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with Kirchner and told her in no uncertain terms that there would be no further negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands — period.

But Kirchner has not let up. Even last month’s referendum among the Falkland Islanders, an overwhelming majority of whom voted to remain under British rule, has not made a dent in her colonialist campaign. As it stands now, the islanders have a democratically elected government that runs everything but defense and foreign affairs.

Kirchner’s position continues to be that the Falkland Islanders, whom she refers to as “squatters,” do not have a right to self-determination. She went so far as to dismiss their recent referendum as meaningless. Meanwhile, she unabashedly accuses Britain of imperialism.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling, but not surprising. This is the same woman who said of a brutal anti-Western, anti-Semitic supporter of terrorist groups across the globe: “Men as Chávez don’t die; they sow.”

This statement was released following the Venezuelan rogue’s death, also mourned by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other evil figures and regimes. One can only imagine what vitriol Kirchner is now spewing about the late, great Margaret Thatcher — the Iron Lady that, unfortunately for her people, the Argentinian president never was, nor ever will be.

Britain should be saluted for not inviting her to the funeral.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”