The Wall Street Journal reports, "just days after the International Court of Justice awarded Peru a chunk of the Pacific Ocean once controlled by Chile, the two neighbors are squabbling over a splinter of land on their border".
"The Hague-based international court didn't address the land dispute, but the ruling on the sea ownership rights sparked fresh life into the bickering over the contested patch of turf".
"The rivals have interpreted the court's judgment differently to bolster their claims on the 3.7-hectare uninhabited triangle of land adjoining the Pacific Ocean. Both claim their border is traced using different boundary markers.
That difference in interpretation of what the court didn't address has spawned heightened rhetoric over the past two days between the two nations with a long history of tense relations, especially since a 19th century war in which Chile trounced Peru. The court didn't return an email asking whether its ruling applied to the triangle of land in question.
Influential Chilean newspaper El Mercurio said in an editorial in its editions Tuesday that the dispute could threaten relations between the two nations, spoiling hard work in recent years to build strong economic, trade and political ties. "The Peruvian demand places this promising reality at serious risk," the newspaper said.
After the court ruling on Monday, Chile's President Sebastian Piñera immediately claimed victory, saying the court "ratifies our ownership of the land triangle." The government in Santiago claims the court in its ruling on the sea border in effect recognized a land marker that affirms ownership of the disputed land for Chile.
But Peru is justifying its claim to the land to a 1929 treaty with Chile. "The court ruling was over the maritime border and not over the land border. There is no way the two can be tied," Peru's chief negotiator in the court case, Allan Wagner, said in a radio interview.
Peru gained about 50,000 square kilometers of ocean on Monday with the court ruling.
Should the land dispute persist, the nations could theoretically return to The Hague court. But a spokesman for the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Peru has no intention of taking the issue to any international court "since a treaty from 1929 shows we are the owner of the land."
Chile's Foreign Affairs Ministry said it couldn't comment on whether it would take the dispute to international arbitration, as both President Piñera and his foreign affairs minister were out of the country.
The two nations have jostled over the splinter of land for years. In 2001, Chile briefly placed a surveillance booth in the area, against which Peru protested.
Domestic political forces are also at play, as it would have been politically costly for the administration of Chile's Mr. Piñera to lose onshore territory, as opposed to an area ocean. "Thanks to the boundary marker…recognition, Piñera can say the ruling wasn't as bad as they thought, and that Chile's territory remains intact," said Juan Nagel, an economist and political commentator with Chile's Universidad de los Andes. Mr. Piñera, a conservative businessman, will leave office in mid-March to be replaced by incoming President Michelle Bachelet, who leads Chile's socialist party.
Bank of America- Merrill Lynch said in a note that the perception of victory by Peru in its maritime border dispute "may help lift President Ollanta Humala's flagging popularity."
