Pink Floyd bassist and singer Roger Waters has risked upsetting some of his British fans by saying the Falkland Islands should belong to Argentina.

The 69-year-old musician, currently on a tour of South America, is said to have made the comments in an interview due to be aired on Chilean TV.

A journalist for the channel, Amaro Gómez-Pablos, tweeted on Tuesday that Waters had told him that he was "ashamed" of Britain's colonial past. When asked who he thought the islands should belong to Waters replied: "Las Malvinas are Argentine."

@tvn_amaro
Amaro Gómez-Pablos

En entrevista exclusiva que saldrá el jueves, Roger Waters fue tajante: "Las Malvinas son argentinas", me dijo.

February 28, 2012 12:52 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite

Las Malvinas is the Argentinian name for the disputed territory.

According to The Guardian, Waters subsequently tempered his remarks in a press conference where he said "clearly there needs to be a solution to the problem of the varying claims".

And The Sun reports that he also said the residents of the islands deserved a say on who ruled them: "They are British, aren't they, so they have a point of view and there is a case to be made."

The diplomatic spat deepened this week after the Argentinian government ordered some of the country's biggest companies to stop imports from Britain as the 30th anniversary of the 1982 Falklands conflict approaches.

And the Foreign Office in London said it was "very concerned" at reports that two British cruise ships were refused entry to an Argentinian port on Monday.

Waters is not the first celebrity to led his support to Buenos Aires' campaign to take control of the islands. Hollywood actor Sean Penn accused Britain of "colonialism" and said the decision to send Prince William to the region as a RAF search and rescue pilot was "unthinkable".

There has been no word what the other members of Pink Floyd think.