Last checked at 
BUENOS AIRES, June 28 (Reuters) - Argentina will pursue inBritain and the United States a local judge's order to seizeassets of oil drillers operating in the disputed FalklandsIslands, the foreign minister said in an interview published inlocal media on Sunday.
On Saturday, a federal judge in Tierra del Fuego ordered theseizure of $156 million in bank accounts, boats and otherproperty of six European and U.S. oil companies operating in theislands.
A source with knowledge of the situation said the ruling wasmeaningless because the companies do not generally hold assetsin Argentina or use Argentine waters.
Foreign Minister Hector Timerman told local newspaper TiempoArgentino on Sunday that on Monday he will formally request thatthe stock exchange regulators in London and New York implementthe judge's order.
The companies named in the order are Premier Oil Plc, Falkland Oil and Gas Ltd, RockhopperExploration Plc, Noble Energy Inc y EdisonInternational Spa.
"The companies can defend themselves in foreign courts, butthat will have a cost or penalty to their market listing,"Timerman said.
He said that international law forbid altering the state ofterritory where the United Nations has accepted that there is asovereignty dispute, and that the companies had breached therule by drilling wells.
Argentina claims sovereignty over the South Atlantic islandswhich it calls the Malvinas, located about 435 miles (700 km)off the coast of Tierra del Fuego and occupied by around 3,000people who mostly say they wish them to remain a Britishoverseas territory.
Britain and Argentina fought a short war in 1982, after thethen Argentine military dictatorship briefly seized the islands,and tensions have escalated again in recent years with thediscovery of oil deposits.
Ahead of Argentine elections in October, rhetoric is heatingup. "What the United Kingdom is doing is what it did in classiccolonialism: appropriate resources from its colonies and takethem back to their country," said Timerman on Sunday.
Falkland Oil and Gas and Rockhopper declined to comment.Noble Energy, the British foreign office and the other mentionedcompanies could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Maximiliano Rizzi, Writing by Rosalba O'Brien;Editing by Diane Craft)
