MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile outlines conditions for a possible Bolivian access to the Pacific

Chilean Foreign Affairs minister Alfredo Moreno: ‘no division of Chile in two’

Chile is willing to cooperate with a sea-outlet for landlocked Bolivia but will not cede sovereignty because “we will never accept something that divides the country in two”, said the Chilean Foreign Affairs minister Alfredo Moreno.

Chile will “analyze all the proposals for a (Bolivian) better access to the sea (Pacific Ocean), but will always guard the interests of Chile, and that interest will never be to have the country divided in two”, said Moreno during an interview Sunday with Chile’s national television.

“Sovereignty is not on the table. President Sebastian Piñera has been crystal clear on the issue: what we are after is to collaborate with Bolivia on an issue that has many years and that is to help its access to the sea”, added Moreno.

The Chilean chancellor was referring to press reports a few days before Piñera took office saying that he stopped former outgoing president Michelle Bachelet from signing an agreement with the administration of Evo Morales by which Chile ceded a non sovereignty coastal enclave to Bolivia in the northern region of Tarapaca.

According to La Tercera, the Pacific Ocean access for Bolivia would have been north of Iquique, which is 1.800 kilometres from the capital Santiago. According to the published version Piñera rejected the initiative because he did not share “the idea to hand the enclave (to Bolivia) given all the migratory, free transit, administrative and infrastructure problems it would create for Chilean authorities”.

“The President does not believe viable ‘to divide’ Chilean territory in two”, published La Tercera.

Bolivia lost its access to the sea following on the Pacific War 1879/1884 in alliance with Peru against Chile. Since then the two countries have tried unsuccessfully (through diplomacy) to recover Bolivia’s access to the Pacific through north Chilean territory.

Chile and Bolivia have been discussing since 2006 a 13 points agenda that includes La Paz demand for access to the Pacific.

The controversy surfaced again last October when President Evo Morales and his Peruvian counterpart, Alan Garcia, signed a deal giving Bolivia a 99-year lease to four square kilometres of desolate shoreline near Peru's southern port of Ilo.

“This opens the door for Bolivians to have an international port, to the use of the ocean for global trade and for Bolivian products to have better access to global markets” President Morales said during the ceremony with Garcia.

According to the Bolivian minister for planning and development, Viviana Caro, direct access to the ocean will cut the distance goods have to travel to Asian markets by 40%. Most of those products are natural resources such as zinc, tin and silver, with which Bolivia is well-endowed.