The head of Britain's defence staff, the country's most senior military officer, General Sir Charles Guthrie, has laid a wreath at the monument in Buenos Aires to the Argentine troops who died in the Falklands War.

The gesture, the first made by a senior member of the British military, echoed President Carlos Menem's homage to Britain's war dead when he laid a wreath in St Paul's cathedral during his visit to London last week.

One thousand Argentine and British servicemen lost their lives in the war in the South Atlantic in 1982.