Addressing the nation on Monday night, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said her country would honour its payments to holders of its restructured debt.

In a nationwide televised broadcast, the President said Argentina wants to avoid a default despite suffering a setback in its long-running legal battle against “holdout” investors.

Hours after the US Supreme Court refused to hear an Argentine appeal aimed at staving off a default, a defiant Fernandez slammed US courts for repeatedly ruling against her government.

She said Argentina was the victim of “extortion” by holdouts who refused to join debt restructuring deals since the catastrophic 2001-02 default on $100 billion of sovereign debt.

But Fernandez said she was still open to negotiations and insisted she would continue to pay the more than 90 per cent of creditors who accepted a renegotiation of the defaulted debt.

She insisted Argentina cannot give holdouts preferential treatment over exchange bondholders after many of them bought the debt at a massive discount and are claiming payback in full.