The chairman of Chile’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jorge Pizarro, said Tuesday his government has prepared its legal case over a maritime border dispute with Peru at the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, in The Hague.
The final arguments will be reviewed by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and President-elect Sebastián Piñera, daily El Comercio reported. Chile has until Mar. 9 to submit its argument to the ICJ. Piñera assumes Chile’s presidency two days later on Mar. 11.
Part of Chile’s case reportedly includes official Peruvian maps that support their argument for maintaining the current maritime border, which is parallel to the equator cutting west across the pacific. Peru’s proposed border follows the countries south-western sloping border into the ocean.
“There is an abundance of official Peruvian documentation, including maps, showing that Peru has also recognized the current maritime border between the two countries,” daily La República reported Chilean Senator Jaime Gazmuri as saying.
Chile says the current border was established under two agreements in the 1950s, however Peru claims those agreements were fishing treaties and the maritime zone has never been delimited.
“If the Chilean argument considers that the 1952 and 1954 treaties are related to the border, we’ll have to ask them why they waited 50 years to register the 1954 treaty at the United Nations,” said Peruvian diplomat and maritime law expert Luis Solari. “The border agreement they reached with Argentina was registered in three months. That is the clearest demonstration that they never considered those agreements as border treaties.”
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 row is 38,000 square kilometers, or about 14,500 square miles, of fishing-rich sea which Chile currently controls.
In January 2007, Peru began proceedings against Chile at the ICJ.
Just like el Moro… Peru wants something back that it lost a loooooongggggg time ago.
Chile giving back territory would be like the U.S. giving back the south-western U.S. back to Mexico.
Personally, I think we (Chile & Peru) should give a stretch of land from each others border to Bolivia for access to the sea… after all, Bolivia did go into war against Chile with their Peruvian friends. Too bad Bolivia is now land locked.
Viva Chile!