Chile Forum

1st and btw, admin, it IS about fish. not about any non-existent, or imagined oil (or other) resources in that triangle.

admin wrote:

1st and btw, admin, it IS about fish. not about any non-existent, or imagined oil (or other) resources in that triangle.

Dude, that was a joke. Every time someone sells something or gives up rights to something involving the ocean or territory it is guaranteed that oil, gold, or some other goody is found on it

Thanks for the 101, wikipedia, type cut and past. I understand very clearly what is involved and at stake, and it is much more than fish. I am married to a CHILEAN professor of international law.

Finally, sorry about the links, but you do not have sufficient credibility with only 6 posts on the forum. At 10 posts, you can post links within the bounds of reason.

Chile reacts to WikiLeaks cable about border dispute with Peru

Chile reacted to a cable filtered by WikiLeaks and undisclosed Friday by El Comercio.

In the note, a diplomatic officer from Chile’s embassy in Lima, whose name is not undisclosed in the cable, says that “his government had become more concerned that the Hague could grant concessions to Peru after a unanimous court decision in December to adjudicate a similar maritime dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua.”

“That decision could effectively invalidate a bilateral agreement demarcating the territory, according to XXXXXX, on the grounds that only a full treaty can make such
demarcations. XXXXX feared this argument would provide a small window for Peru's contention that the 1952 and 1954 fishing accords were not legally sufficient to settle the boundary,” says the cable.

"Peru is manipulating"

Jorge Tarud, congressman of the Party for Democracy (Partido por la Democracia-PPD), and member of the Chilean congress Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, accused Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of “manipulating” the WikiLeaks cable published in El Comercio.

“We are witnessing the manipulation that Peru’s foreign office and El Comercio daily are doing to suggest that things [between Peru and Chile] are going well during Alan Garcías administration,” he said to La Tercera.

Tarud who is well known for his incendiary comments, and who said last November that Alan García was not welcomed in Chile assured, “Among the dozens of cables that were written by the U.S. embassy in Lima, the majority of them favor Chile.” He did not show any evidence to sustain what he said though.

“Alan García steps down from office in July, thereafter he leaves his sucesor the responsibility to continue in The Hague. “In Chile, neither Bachelet’s nor Piñera's administration have or have had fears about The Hague’s ruling,” he said.

Chile government reacts

“One does not know what to believe: the cable itself or the very biased interpretation of the newspaper that obviously consulted sources of the Peruvian government,” said Alberto van Klaveren, Chile’s agent to The Hague in the maritime dispute held with Peru.

Van Klaveren also assured to El Mercurio that “if there is something quite clear is that the court will always respect the supremacy of the treaties, and those treaties are obviously giving the reason to Chile.”

Bolivia gets involved in Chile/Peru ongoing maritime dispute

International relations between Chile and Bolivia are tense and could worsen, considering the impact of a Monday press release from Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Relations.

SANTIAGO, Chile, July 14 (UPI) -- A maritime border dispute between Chile and Peru threatens to get worse after Bolivia decided to step in as a potential party in a future resolution of the deepening row over access to the sea.

The Chilean-Peruvian dispute centers on maritime waters but relations between Chile and Bolivia received repeated setbacks this year after Bolivia revived efforts to regain access to the sea it lost in a 19th-century conflict that remains a bitter memory for Bolivians.

In 2010 Peru granted Bolivia access to the Pacific on a 99-year lease but La Paz didn't consider that arrangement satisfactory. As emotions ran high on the anniversary of Bolivia's loss of the coastal territory in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific Bolivian President Evo Morales decided he would take his claim for permanent and sovereign access to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands.

He warned he would raise the issue also at the Organization of American States in Washington.

Morales plans to take Chile to court with his sovereignty claim, which Chile rejects. In the meantime, both the Peruvian gesture of a leased strip and the ongoing maritime disputes between Chile and Peru have soured diplomatic climate among the neighbors.

The issues are mired in Latin America's history and numerous wars involving the evolving states of the 19th century on the continent and Spain's colonial presence.

In the latest escalation, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry said it had informed the International Court of Bolivia's intention to sue Chile and of its right to sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean.

Chilean diplomats decried the Bolivian move, arguing negotiation was the correct way forward and warned the Bolivian action was heightening tension in the area.

Morales says he is impatient for a resolution and cannot wait for bilateral discussions to lead to an early resolution. However, the country's opposition criticized his haste and accused Morales of using the coastal sovereignty issue as an attempt to distract public attention away from domestic problems in Bolivia.

Analysts found comparisons between Morales' campaign for sovereign access to the sea and Argentine claims on British-ruled Falkland Islands pursued by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Critics of Fernandez, too, want her to concentrate energies on solving Argentina's domestic problems first.

Bolivia has repeatedly made known its intention to raise the issue of sovereign access to the Pacific at the OAS but hasn't carried out its threat.

The sovereign territorial access to the sea that Bolivia seeks is close to the strip it received as part of the 99-year lease from Peru. The land between the Chilean-Peruvian border stretches out from landlocked Bolivia to the sea, an area that Morales believes will give Bolivian trade valuable access to the rest of the world.

Critics of the initiative want Morales to tone down his campaign and be content with the leased strip. Bolivia has announced plans to build its own port, including a military base, on the Pacific coast south of the Peruvian port of Ilo.

Rising tensions have given rise to speculative proposals for defusing the tension. The Santiago Times cited a 2009 proposal by three Chilean architects to build a 93-mile-long underground passage for Bolivia's benefit along the Chile-Peru border. The enormous costs involved in such an undertaking made the idea impractical for the time being.