By Tom Azzopardi
SANTIAGO, Chile
Bolivia has filed a legal report before the International Court of Justice justifying its claim of access to the Pacific Ocean across territory annexed by Chile in the 19th Century.
Chile annexed around 120,000 square kilometers of Bolivian territory, including the whole of its Pacific Coast, in the 1879-1882 War of the Pacific during which it also seized part of southern Peru.
The land seized by Chile later proved to contain huge mineral wealth, including nitrates, used as fertilizer, and metals, including some of the world’s largest copper mines.
“We cannot go on waiting more and more bilateral and multilateral meetings and rulings by the OAS (Organization of Americas States,” said Bolivian President Evo Morales on April 16 in La Paz, a day after presenting the document in the Netherlands.
Morales said he hoped the court would “do justice” by the Bolivian people.
But Chilean Foreign Relations Minister Heraldo Munoz attacked the Bolivian bid as “contrived” and “without legal basis,” earlier this week.
The Chilean government, which maintains that relations between Bolivia and Chile are governed by a treaty signed in 1904, will begin analyzing the Bolivian claim next week.
“We need to begin analysis of this large document and, of course, we are not going to make any early announcements about the contents or the legal issues,” Munoz said April 17th after presenting a copy of the Bolivian report to President Michelle Bachelet.
One option being considered by Chile’s lawyers is to argue that the Dutch court has no grounds to hear the Bolivian claim.
Chile’s representative in the case, Felipe Bulnes, said the country now has three months from the presentation of the Bolivian report to present a “preliminary exception” which could ask the court to declare itself incompetent to hear the case.
He added that the Peruvian government has also requested a copy of the report.
“This forms part of the rules of the court, any country which believes it has a reason to see the demand can ask for it and it does not breach any principle of legal reserve,” the lawyer explained.
Last January, the ICJ ruled that Chile and Peru should modify their sea border, after Peru laid claim to 38,000 square kilometers of Chilean waters. The Chilean government is reviewing the decision.
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