ARGENTINA-CHILE: Last Border Accord, a Historical Milestone

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 16 1998 (IPS) - In December 1978, Argentina and Chile were governed by dictators and on the verge of war. Twenty years later, the presidents of the two countries signed an accord Wednesday that put an end to the last border dispute.

The accord signed by presidents Carlos Menem of Argentina and Eduardo Frei of Chile is based on friendship, trust, mutual support and growing ties in trade and investment, in contrast to the situation two decades ago.

“Twenty years ago, in the days before Christmas, our people were preparing for war. Today we are preparing for peace,” Frei said upon signing the accord in Buenos Aires which ended the dispute over the Southern Icefields – the last pending border conflict between the two Southern Cone countries which are separated by one of the world’s longest shared borders.

The agreement delimits the border along the high summits of the watershed, the demarcation principle followed by the two countries in 1881 and ratified in later accords, until a 1991 agreement came up with a compromise solution to delimit a 160-km stretch of border.

After seven years of talks, during which ratification of agreements negotiated by the governments was consistently blocked by a lack of parliamentary consensus in both countries, the foreign ministries of Argentina and Chile and a group of legislators sponsored a commission of experts to come up with a solution.

The commission returned to the principle of the watersheds, and legislators from both ruling and opposition parties in the two countries almost unanimously accepted the proposal.

The accord is to be ratified within the next three months, by which time the new map with the final demarcation of the disputed stretch of border will have been completed.

According to the new agreement, the border posts will stretch from Monte Fitzroy in the north to Cerro Daudet to the south. The accord also stipulates that a map with a 1:50,000 km scale will be drawn up by April to delimit the rest of the border.

Both Frei and Menem underscored that the new accord left behind decades of confrontations and initiated a new historical era characterised by peace, friendship, trust and economic development.

Frei pointed out that 20 years ago, Argentina and Chile were on the brink of war over islands in the Beagle channel. Thousands of soldiers were deployed by the dictatorship headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Argentina’s armed forces, which had taken over the government in 1976.

At that time, Argentina resisted Britain’s ruling in favour of Chile during an arbitration process. War was averted at the eleventh hour by the intervention of Pope John Paul II, following diplomatic efforts by Cardinal Antonio Samore.

Up to then, relations between the two countries had been marked by mistrust and confrontation. But with the solution to the Beagle channel conflict and the restoration of democracy in the two countries, relations began to thaw.

Joint military maneuvres were carried out by the two countries this year. And on Tuesday, the first day of his visit to Buenos Aires, Frei attended a graduation ceremony for cadets – the first time the military ceremony was attended by a foreign president.

At last week’s Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) summit, Menem and the presidents of Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay expressed their support for Chile’s defence of the principle of territoriality in the case of Pinochet. The former de facto leader has been under arrest in London since mid-October, and could be extradited to Spain and tried there for human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

In response to Argentina’s gesture, Chilean Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza said his country was sorry for having backed Britain during the 1982 war over the Malvinas/Falklands islands. To settle that debt, Frei ratified Chile’s commitment in favour of Argentina’s sovereignty over the islands.

The new ties between the two nations have been strengthened as their economies opened to a bilateral flow of investment and trade.

Today Chile is one of the top foreign investors in Argentina, with capital in electricity, mining, real estate and a number of chains of supermarkets and shopping centres. Around 145 Chilean companies have set up shop in Argentina in the past few years.

The annual flow of trade between the two countries has grown to nearly 2.7 billion dollars. Argentina provides Chile mainly with oil and gas, as well as prepared food and agricultural products.

Moreover, Chile enjoys associate status in Mercosur, which grants it access to Atlantic ports, and provides the bloc’s members with cheaper transport toward Southeast Asia.