By IPS Correspondents
SANTIAGO, Mar 25 2004 (IPS)

Projects to boost the physical integration of transportation in South America will face a major obstacle unless the conflict between Chile and Bolivia over the latter’s demand for an outlet to the sea is worked out, say analysts and political leaders in both countries.

The Chilean government reiterated its willingness to hold talks with La Paz.

But it did not publicly respond to statements by Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, who said Tuesday that South American integration would not be achieved if his landlocked country’s demand for a port on the Pacific Ocean was not resolved.

Mesa’s remarks came on the ”Day of the Sea”, with which Bolivia commemorates every year the loss of its coastal province of Antofagasta in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), in which it fought Chile in alliance with Peru, which lost the province of Tarapacá.

This year, the date had a special significance: it was the 125th anniversary of the start of the war, and the 100th anniversary of the signing of the 1904 peace treaty that demarcated the current borders between Chile and Bolivia, which according to La Paz was imposed by force.

The public clamour for an outlet to the sea was reactivated last October, when protests over plans to sell Bolivia’s natural gas to the United States after transporting it through a pipeline that would run through a Chilean port mushroomed into a weeks-long massive popular uprising that toppled then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who was replaced by Mesa, his vice-president.

At the January Summit of the Americas in the Mexican city of Monterrey, a quarrel broke out between Mesa and Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who did not want the Summit to take a position on Bolivia’s demand, on the grounds that it is a bilateral issue.

On the Day of the Sea, Chilean flags were burnt in protests held in La Paz and other Bolivian cities, and a demonstration was held the following day, Wednesday, in the western Bolivian city of Tambo Quemado, on the Chilean border.

There is concern about the climate in which the Chile-Bolivia World Cup 2006 playoff match will take place on Mar. 30 in La Paz.

In his speech on Day of the Sea, Mesa said Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia and Chile will not achieve ”a process of integration stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific” if the conflict between Santiago and La Paz is not settled.

Mesa was referring to the plans for integration of physical infrastructure in transportation that began to take shape in South America in the 1990s, which are to involve the creation of a network of highways that would link Atlantic Ocean ports in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to Peruvian and Chilean ports on the Pacific coast.

The ”transportation corridors” would have to run through South America’s two landlocked countries, Paraguay and Bolivia, which are thus key to promoting intra-regional integration, trade and tourism, and to the development of economic ties between South America and the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

”For several reasons” a solution must be sought that would include an outlet to the sea for Bolivia, said Chilean Senator Ricardo Núñez of President Lagos’ Socialist Party, which forms part of the governing centre-left coalition.

Until Mar. 15, Núñez was the chair of the International Relations Commission in the Chilean Senate.

Ties with Bolivia are of strategic importance ”because Chile will never have access to the Amazon river. In South America, only Chile and Uruguay have no access to the Amazon region,” the lawmaker said in an interview with Asuntos Públicos (Public Affairs), an on-line publication that specialises in political analysis and debate.

”The Amazon, and especially the southern part of the Amazon region, will be strategic to the development and future of South America, there is no doubt about that,” said Núñez.

”And Bolivia will be strategic to communications between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Just as Germany is somehow the centre of Europe, linking western and eastern Europe, Bolivia plays that role in South America,” added the senator, who underlined that due to its location, the landlocked country is of strategic significance to Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

Núñez said he was in favour of a dialogue between the two countries with a broad agenda, carried out at the foreign ministry and parliamentary levels.

An open letter published on Mar. 21 was signed by 77 historians, journalists, writers, lawyers, filmmakers, anthropologists and other intellectuals from Chile and Bolivia who called on their governments to begin talks immediately, with a view to reaching a ”satisfactory agreement” between the two countries.

The agreement should grant Bolivia sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean in such a way that Chilean territory would not be divided, said the letter, whose signatories included Tomás Moulián, the dean of the ARCIS (Arts and Social Sciences) University in Chile, and lawyer José Aylwin, the son of former Chilean president Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994).

Mesa said his government is aware that the dispute with Chile ”is essentially a bilateral issue,” and that he is thus willing ”to move ahead with a direct dialogue” between the two countries.

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