BUENOS AIRES - Award-winning actor and far-left political activist Sean Penn is siding with left-wing president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina over the British-owned Falkland Islands, saying that Britain should enter into UN-sponsored talks over the island's sovereignty.

On Monday, Penn met with Kirchner to discuss the issue, and even called the islands "the Malvinas Islands of Argentina," a name that the military junta of Argentina used in 1982 when it launched a military attack in a failed attempt to capture the islands. 

Penn, who still overtly supports Hugo Chavez despite the increasing tally of human rights violations under his rule, added that "the world today is not going to tolerate any ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology."

The Falklands are legally a self-governing British Oversees Territory, whose population of around 3000 consists of a majority of Falkland Islanders of British descent, with the rest made up of other ethnicities that include French, Gibraltarian, and Scandinavian. 

The UK has held sovereignty over the islands since 1833, and have refused to negotiate any change in status as long as the islanders wish to remain part of the British realm. Several votes and numerous polls show a consistent desire by the islanders to keep their current status, and not to be part of Argentina. Yet, it has been a rallying point of both bellicose military governments as well as left-wing socialist governments in Argentina to claim the islands as part of Argentina. 

The call for the UK to enter into negotiations has grown louder ever since geological surveys showed that there might be as many as 60 billion barrels of oil in the territory surrounding the Falklands. Both the UK and Argentina worked out an agreement in 1995 over the rights to any oil finds in the islands' territory, but the Kirchner government announced in 2007 that it would no longer honor the agreement. Soon after, the left-wing Kirchner administration began enlisting Hugo Chavez and the other far-left governments in the region to support its claims to the islands and the oil rights that would come with them.