A ruling on the maritime border dispute between Peru and Chile is expected to be pushed back until next year, daily Peru.21 reported.
The expected date of the ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague has been pushed back several times.
The ruling was currently expected to be announced in September, after the Court’s summer recess, but Allan Wagner, Peru’s representative at the court, said it will likely be delayed further.
The court has various other cases this month, while it also does not want to release the ruling before Chile’s presidential election in November.
Peru filed its complaint at the ICJ in January 2008, during President Alan Garcia’s administration. President Ollanta Humala has continued the same legal and foreign relations team, which is headed by Allan Wagner, former Foreign Relations minister.
The dispute dates back to the 1879 – 1883 War of the Pacific, in which Peru and Bolivia lost substantial territory to Chile. Central to the current row is 38,000 square kilometers (about 14,500 square miles) of fishing-rich sea which Chile currently controls.
Chile says the current border, which runs parallel to the Equator, was established under two agreements signed in the 1950s, which Peru claims were fishing treaties and that the maritime zone has never been settled.
Peru’s proposed border follows the countries’ south-western sloping border into the ocean, with the disputed area marked in dark blue in the map.
