The Argentine ambassador to the U.S. on Thursday denounced a Florida Republican’s comments on alleged Chinese military involvement in the South American country, calling the remarks “inaccurate” and “offensive.”

In a letter to Rep. María Elvira Salazar, Ambassador Jorge Argüello lashed out at the lawmaker, who at a House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) hearing Tuesday accused Argentina of joining other Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia in giving China a military foothold in the Americas.

Some of the remarks that you made at that meeting are not only clearly inaccurate but are also offensive,” Argüello wrote.

Salazar, who chairs the Western Hemisphere subcommittee within HFAC, warned about a growing Chinese presence, accusing Argentina of playing host to its regional aspiration.

We know the Chinese are not here for trade, they are here for war,” Salazar said.

Argüello pushed back against the idea of Chinese military presence in his country.

“First of all, I would like to emphasize that there is no infrastructure or military presence of an extra-regional power in Argentina, with the exception of the one that corresponds to the illegal occupation of the Malvinas Islands by the United Kingdom,” wrote Argüello, referencing Argentina’s claim to what are known in English as the Falkland Islands, over which Argentina and the United Kingdom fought a brief war in 1982.

At the hearing Tuesday, Salazar also said Argentina was considering building a Chinese jet fighter factory in its territory and warned of a Chinese space installation in the country. 

Argüello pushed back against both those claims, calling the jet fighter factory accusation “absurd,” and comparing the space communications station, run jointly by China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control Center General (CLTC) and the Argentine Space Agency (CONAE), to a nearby project run with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Argentina is currently looking to update its supersonic fighter fleet following the 2015 retirement of the last of its Dassault Mirage III interceptor fighters, which were active in the Falkland Islands War.

The country is considering buying either used U.S.-made F-16 fighters from Denmark, the Indian LCA Tejas or the Chinese-Pakistani Chengdu-PAC JF-17 Thunder, according to a report from Air Data News.

Argüello wrote Salazar that the supply of jet fighters available to Argentina is “very narrowly reduced” because of British sanctions on the country related to the 1982 war.