MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

High level talks with Chile for a Pacific outlet for landlocked Bolivia

Former president Michelle Bachelet was willing to grant Bolivia a 28 kilometres enclave

Chile and Bolivia begin talks Monday in La Paz on a 13 point agenda agreed in 2006 and which among other issues includes the landlocked country’s aspiration to recover its outlet to the Pacific lost during a regional war in 1879.

Chilean Foreign Affairs minister Alfredo Moreno arrived Monday at La Paz, the first visit of such a secretary to Bolivia in half a century, and will join the bilateral “standing commission”, agreed last January 17 when Bolivian Foreign Affairs minister David Choquehuanca visited Santiago, --another extraordinary event--.

The purpose of the high level commission is to analyze and consider a “useful, feasible and concrete” solution to the long standing demand, anticipated the Bolivian consul in Santiago Walker San Miguel in a Sunday interview.

Neighbouring Bolivia and Chile have no formal diplomatic relations since 1979 when a previous negotiation attempt, involving the military governments of both countries, fell through.

Choquehuanca anticipated that “Bolivia and Chile need to reach an agreement, since they can’t go on talking for another 100 years”.

Moreno on his side said that “there’s a positive, optimistic attitude with much willingness for issues (of the 13 point agenda) to be addressed and solved, in depth, seriously but also at the speed we are capable of doing so”.

The discussions take place with the background of recent revelations from a former Bolivian official who said that ex-president Michelle Bachelet at one point offered landlocked Bolivia a non-sovereign 28 kilometres coast line enclave as a possible outlet to the Pacific.

In that area Bolivia was expected to set up a port for its overseas trade plus the building of a small city.

However “we told Chile that although we would not discuss the sovereignty issue in the first stage, we would in the final stage. There’s a rule in diplomacy which says that ‘nothing is agreed until all is agreed’” said Hugo Fernandez former Bolivian Deputy Foreign Minister (2007/2009).

Fernandez also pointed out that he believes “the current Chilean government is less open than the Bachelet administration to reach a solution to the maritime problem with Bolivia. President Piñera insists in discussing the issue through a corridor to the sea, and not an enclave”.

Bolivia has cautioned that if negotiations don’t prosper it would take the demand against Chile before the International Court of The Hague, where Chile already faces another litigation dispute with Peru regarding maritime borders.

In 1879 Chile defeated a Bolivia-Peruvian coalition following which Bolivia lost its 400 kilometres of Pacific coast line and Peru its southern most province which have since then been fully integrated to Chilean territory.