India, Sept. 29 -- Argentine President Javier Milei said Monday that his government would seek international arbitration against the UK over an oil project off the disputed, UK-controlled Falkland Islands, escalating a clash over resources that could transform the economy of the sparsely populated South Atlantic archipelago.

Milei's office said it had given the UK two weeks to halt work on Sea Lion, an offshore oilfield being developed by Israel's Navitas Petroleum and the UK's Rockhopper Exploration. Otherwise, Argentina would ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a Hamburg-based maritime court, to order a temporary halt to the project.

"Argentina will not stand idly by," the presidential statement said, accusing the U...