LIMA, Peru — January 27, 2014 — The United Nations’ highest court set a maritime boundary between Chile and Peru on Monday that grants Peruvians a bigger piece of the Pacific Ocean while keeping rich coastal fishing grounds in the hands of Chilean industry.
Despite high emotions over the dispute, especially in Peru, the ruling is expected to have little effect on cordial ties between the two neighbors whose economic interdependence has grown greatly in recent years.
Chile’s outgoing president, Sebastian Pinera, called the International Court of Justice’s ruling ‘‘a lamentable loss’’ in a nationally televised address. But President-elect Michelle Bachelet, who takes office in March, said that ‘‘most of the fishing occurs inside the area that the court ratified as belonging to our country.’’
Peru’s leader, Ollanta Humala, told his countrymen on national TV that he was satisfied with the outcome, saying the court had recognized Peru’s argument that no maritime treaty previously existed between the South American neighbors.
Peruvian patriots might crow, but Chilean commercial fishing fleets appeared to be the biggest beneficiaries, analysts said.
In Chile’s northern port of Arica, police dispersed a group of fewer than 100 small-time fishermen with water cannon after some, considering themselves losers, hurled stones at a military barracks.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe