The exact coordinates for a new maritime border between Peru and Chile will be completed by mid-March, according to Peru’s Foreign Relations minister, Eda Rivas, this morning in Lima.
On Thursday, Peruvian and Chilean officials met in Santiago to discuss the implementation of the ruling, which was announced late last month by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The 14-hour meeting between the officials included Peru’s Foreign Relations Minister Eda Rivas and Defense Minister Pedro Cateriano, and their Chilean counterparts, Foreign Relations Minister Alfredo Moreno and Defense Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter.
Although media reports initially said that the officials hoped to establish the new coordinates for the maritime border on February 26, Rivas in Lima this morning said the final implementation will be made “around the 24th or 15th of March.”
The international court’s judgment gave Peru the right over almost 50,000 square kilometers, which is over 70 percent of the area that Peru was claiming. However, the court did not establish the exact coordinates of the new border and instead gave the responsibility of reaching an agreement to Peru and Chile.
The previous border was a straight line that stretched 200 square kilometers out from the Peruvian and Chilean land border. The new ruling stretches out 80 square kilometers from the border and then slopes south, giving Peru more control over deeper ocean waters.
The issue of borders dates back to the 19th Century War of the Pacific, which resulted in Chile gaining large swaths of Peruvian and Bolivian territory. The final land border decisions were implemented in 1929.
