The report, released a day after the 32nd anniversary of the Argentinian invasion of the South Atlantic islands, highlights British frustration that Washington has refused to support the rights of the islanders to decide their own future.

“We are disappointed that the US administration fails to give priority to the principle of self-determination in its position on sovereignty of the Falkland Islands,” says the 67-page report by the Foreign Affairs Committee.

In an otherwise largely up-beat assessment of London’s relationship with Washington, the committee grumbled at the Obama administration’s desire, as one expert witness put it, to “play it both ways” over the Falklands issue…

Luke Coffey, a former adviser to Liam Fox when he was Defence Secretary and now the Margaret Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think-tank in Washington, said the US had clearly “abandoned its long held position of neutrality” in the dispute.