Ecuador, Bolivia throw in with Peru in maritime border case against Chile

[Judi Lynn]

Ecuador, Bolivia throw in with Peru in maritime border case against Chile

Submitted by WW4 Report on Mon, 05/23/2011 - 20:36. A long-standing maritime border dispute between Chile and Peru that is currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague took a new turn last week when a third country, Ecuador, moved to formally demarcate its sea boundaries with the government in Lima. The deal reaffirms the Peru-Ecuador sea border as a straight horizontal line that runs west parallel to the equator from the land boundary. The new treaty also contains a clause in which Ecuador confirms that Peru's 1950s accords with Chile were fishing agreements—not a three-way border agreement. Peru's government is now hoping to use the agreement with Ecuador as a legal argument to finally settle its dispute with Chile. Lima's Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Antonio García Belaunde said the signing of the agreement with Quito "is important because it ratifies the premise that Peru has always held up that the agreements of 1954 and 1952 are fishing (accords), and that will strengthen our position at The Hague."

Peru filed a complaint with the ICJ in 2008, demanding that Chile drop its claim to 14,500 square miles of contested, fishing-rich Pacific waters. Chile cites the accords it signed with Peru and Ecuador in 1952 and 1954 to back up its claim to the contested waters. Lima's hopes its new agreement with Ecuador will back up its own claims that those agreements were only drawn up to establish fishing rights. The new agreement will need to be ratified by the legislatures of both Peru and Ecuador.

"Our theory has always been that Peru, Ecuador and Chile signed fishing agreements in 1952, but our Chilean friends have always said that these were maritime accords," said Peru's President Alan García. "What does it mean 60 years later now that we have signed a maritime boundary agreement with Ecuador? It means that the agreement in 1952 wasn't a maritime border accord."

Chilean lawmaker Jorge Tarud, a member of the lower house foreign relations committee, retorted that the deal with Ecuador has nothing to do with his government’s own dispute with Peru. "The judges at The Hague aren't stupid. They know the history well, and this (pact) won't have any effect.” said Tarud. In an interview with the Santiago daily La Tercera, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said that in signing the agreement with Ecuador, said that Peru, after respecting the 1950s accords for decades, only suddenly “began to ignore” them. He also asserted that Ecuador has not formally rejected the the borders he says were established in those accords: "President (Rafael) Correa told me that Ecuador's position has not changed in any way."

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