PERU SUBMITS CHILE BORDER DISPUTE ARGUMENTS TO THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L LIMA 000394 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/21/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PE SUBJECT: PERU SUBMITS CHILE BORDER DISPUTE ARGUMENTS TO THE HAGUE REF: A. LIMA 072 ¶B. LIMA 0360 Classified By: Amb. P Michael McKinley for reasons 1.4b and d. ¶1. (U) Introduction and Summary: The GOP on March 19 submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague its legal brief arguing for defining (and redrawing) Peru's maritime border with Chile. Peru's submission is the second step in a judicial process that the GOP initiated in ¶2008. The Government of Chile will have until March 2010 to submit its counter-argument, which will be followed by the oral argument phase. Observers expect the process to last another three to five years. ¶2. (C) The Peru-Chile boundary dispute dates to the 19th Century War of the Pacific when the victorious Chile seized a substantial chunk of southern Peru. In 1929, most of the land border was successfully delineated, but debate over the maritime boundary continues to animate Peruvian nationalists, eager politicians and others. While Chile's position is that there is no dispute, Peru believes that a formal agreement is needed to settle the maritime boundary matter definitively. Foreign Ministry officials stress the broadly positive relationship with Chile and hope the Hague process will resolve a thorny issue that has prevented further integration. Peruvian officials also believe they will win concessions at the Hague, and the appointment last year of former Defense and Foreign Minister Alan Wagner to oversee the GOP's case at the Hague underscores the seriousness of Peru's intentions. Some officials justify their optimism by citing the October 2007 ICJ decision to resolve a similar Nicaragua-Honduras maritime dispute by splitting the two countries' claims down the middle (Ref A). End Introduction and Summary. Roots of the Maritime Dispute -------------- ¶3. (U) Peru has disputed its border with Chile periodically since the War of the Pacific (1879-1884),when Chile seized a large piece of what was until then Peruvian territory. The two parties demarcated their shared land border in a 1929 treaty, starting from "a point on the coast denominated 'Concordancia', located 10 kilometers north of the Lluta River bridge, continuing eastward parallel to and ten kilometers north of the Chilean section of the Arica-La Paz railroad". In accordance with the treaty, a bilateral commission established a series of boundary markers called �00A;"hitos" to delineate the border. Hito 1 is located several hundred meters inland, within sight of the Concordancia (on the shoreline where the land meets the sea); subsequent 'hitos' extend northeastward through the desert into the interior. These 'hitos' and the terrestrial borderline they describe are undisputed. ¶3. (U) The 1929 treaty, however, did not explicitly discuss the maritime border. Peru and Chile eventually addressed this issue implicitly in two fishing agreements in 1952 and ¶1954. In the first accord, the parties agreed to respect their neighbors' sovereign rights over a zone of 200 nautical miles extending from each country's shore. In the second, they agreed to establish a band on either side of a "maritime border" where boats could move freely in order to protect innocent fishermen that accidentally crossed into the neighboring country's sovereign waters. The 1954 agreement established this band along the "parallel that constitutes the maritime limit between the two countries." That is, for the purposes of fishing vessels from either country that strayed into the territorial waters of the other, the agreement tacitly recognized Peru and Chile's maritime border as a line projecting westward into the ocean along a geographical lateral (latitide parallel). In joint protocols in 1968 and 1969, Peru and Chile confirmed this interpretation and explicitly established "Hito 1" as the point of departure for the maritime border. ¶4. (SBU) In the absence of a formal treaty describing the maritime boundary between Chile and Peru, Chile observes the boundary implicitly described in the 1954 fishing agreement and elaborated in 1968-1967 protocols. For this reason, it has become and remains Chile's contention that there is no maritime boundary dispute with Peru. By contrast, Peru contends that the 1952 and 1954 fishing agreements were never intended to establish the formal maritime boundary between the two countries, and do not do so now. Peru believes that a formal agreement explicitly describing this maritime boundary is needed to settle the matter once and for all. In that sense, the core disagreement is whether a dispute exists at all, with Peru claiming there is one and Chile saying there is not. ¶5. (SBU) Many Peruvians further argue that the informal maritime boundary established in the 1954 fishing agreement unfairly favors Chile because Peru's landmass north of the parallel juts westward into the Pacific; as a result, Chile holds sovereignty over a larger maritime zone, including coastal waters "in front of" Peru's land mass. (One Peruvian living near the border told Poloff the parallel runs so close to land that in some areas one steps off Peruvian soil into Chilean waters.) Peru argues that the maritime border should begin at the point of Concordancia -- rather than Hito 1 -- and travel southwest along a line equidistant between Chilean and Peruvian land (rather than along the geographical lateral). Peru says this is the solution prescribed by international law and the implicit intention of the 1929 treaty, which cannot be overridden by a separate agreement on fishing rights. In arguing for an equidistant line, Peru claims an additional 37,900 square kilometers of maritime sovereignty. In arguing that the line should depart from the point of Concordancia rather than the Hito 1 -- located slightly north and inland from the Concordancia -- Peru also claims a small triangle of 37,000 square meters of barren coastal land. Comment: To Remove a Thorn -------------- ¶6. (C) When the Garcia government submitted the maritime dispute to the Hague in January 2008, it sought mainly to take the debate off the streets and out of the headlines in order to resolve a longstanding bilateral irritant in an "apolitical" manner. It also hoped to wall off the issue from Peru's broader, commercially vibrant relationship with Chile. Peruvian officials have reiterated this diplomatic objective -- alongside the more obvious goal of righting a historical wrong and recuperating lost territory -- in public statements marking the submission of Peru's brief in the Hague. While nationalist opposition leader Ollanta Humala has come out publicly in support of the GOP's approach, the periodic deadlines within the Hague process for submitting arguments and rebuttals are likely to continue providing pretexts for renewed agitation by nationalistic political actors. (Ref B). MCKINLEY