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The future Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Antonia Urrejola, affirmed yesterday that the president-elect Gabriel Boric has ratified the team that has been working with the Silala lawsuit and that the allegations will be presented next April, where there will be no ” position change”.
“The President (Boric) has ratified the team that has been working with Silala and Ximena Fuentes -designated Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs- who is the agent in this, she will continue to be the agent together with her entire team and that is what we were talking, that he ratifies the whole team and we are going to continue working on that line. The allegations are now in April and there is no change of position there,” anticipated the next chancellor, after holding her first working meeting with the elected president, according to La Tercera.
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The future undersecretary of Foreign Relations, Ximena Fuentes, served between 2008 and 2012 as an advisory lawyer for Chile in the lawsuit filed by Peru before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. And in 2016 she was appointed Chile’s agent before the International Court of Justice in the case on the status and use of the Silala waters between Chile and Bolivia.
In a previous interview with a Chilean media outlet, Fuentes maintained that in the case of the Silala River, it is not about interpreting documents, but about determining a fact, that “the Silala River water system is an international watercourse because its portions are located in the territory of Chile and Bolivia. From this, the applicable law comes from its own: both states have the right to use it in accordance with the rule of fair and reasonable use. Therefore, it is a case that revolves around scientific evidence.”
The Silala is a water course that starts in Potosí, about four kilometers from the border with Chile. It has more than 90 springs that drain naturally down the slope of the land, over 140 meters. Chile has argued that the Silala is a river with an international course, so its waters belong to both countries.
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Gustavo Aliaga, deputy of the Citizen Community (CC), who has been following the Silala case for years, in May 2021 observed that until that date, the government of Luis Arce had not appointed before The Hague either the Agent or the Co-Agent in the framework of the Silala demand. In this 2022 there is also no public knowledge about the designation of the personnel who will see the allegations, scheduled for April of this year.
Chile sued Bolivia in June 2016 to claim rights over the Silala spring water, which it considers to be a river with an international course.
