Bolivian President Evo Morales oversaw on Sunday (June 19) the first meeting of the Silala Defence Council as Bolivian authorities prepared a strategy for its case against Chile over the disputed Silala River.
Early in June, Chilean officials submitted documentation to start formal legal proceedings over the Silala river, asking the International Court of Justice to declare it “an international watercourse” and granting Chile usage rights.
President Evo Morales responded by saying he will counter-sue Chile in the decades-old dispute over whether Chile has the right to use the river that crosses their shared border.
Bolivia’s representative in Defence of Sea Access and the Silala River, former president Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, said the meeting was productive.
“We had a working meeting with President Evo Morales and with the authorities to examine the scope of the lawsuit filed by Chile, the work that we have done on this issue in order to enforce the rights of the national heritage, of dignity and of sovereignty around the Silala waters,” he said.
He added that representatives from Chile and Bolivia would meet with the International Court of Justice next week.
“Next week, on Thursday, the 23rd at 4 in the afternoon, the representative from Chile and the representative from Bolivia will meet with the President of the Court [Judge Ronny Abraham of France] to define the aspects of procedural order that have to do with the schedule of presentations of memory by the parties – the memory of Chile against the memory of Bolivia. There will be a corresponding announcement and also, this meeting will mark the times in which they will continue on the issues that concern us regarding Chile’s lawsuit and, in this case, the countersuit. Bolivia will evaluate the opportunity to do it,” he said.
Chile uses some of river water in its parched Atacama desert to feed mine operations. Bolivia wants to charge Santiago for it, claiming ownership of the Silala on the grounds that it originates from springs on its side of the border.
With no bilateral solution in sight, Bolivia has accused Chile of going back on the 1948 Pact of Bogota, which provides for a political means to seek a resolution to deal with intra-hemispheric disputes.
The South American neighbours have been engaged in a separate legal case at the court since 2013, when landlocked Bolivia filed proceedings demanding that Chile grant it access to the Pacific Ocean.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016