The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, recognized former congressman León Fredy Muñoz Lopera as the new ambassador of Colombia in Managua, eight months after he withdrew the credentials of the previous representative of the Andean country, the Official Gazette reported on Tuesday, La Gaceta.
On February 23, during the previous administration of Iván Duque, Nicaragua withdrew Alfredo Rangel Suárez’s credentials as Colombian ambassador in Managua, “by offensively interfering in the internal affairs of our country,” according to the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry.
Previously, Colombia ordered its ambassador in Managua to return to the country after President Ortega assured that the Andean nation is a “narco-state” where social leaders are assassinated daily.
Now, through a presidential agreement, the Sandinista president agreed to recognize the former representative to the Chamber for Antioquia in the position of extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua.
Ortega also ordered the civil and military authorities to keep and keep the prerogatives and immunities that correspond to his hierarchy.
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Muñoz Lopera presented his copies of the credential letters before the Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Denis Moncada, on October 14, with which he became the first ambassador of Colombia in Managua during the Administration of Gustavo Petro.
On September 21, Ortega appointed veteran diplomat Gadiel Francisco Arce Mairena as his new ambassador to Colombia, a position that had been vacant since December 2021.
Arce Mairena, who was a foreign relations official during the first Sandinista government (1979-1990) in the former Yugoslavia, and had political responsibilities for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Germany, Cuba, England and Venezuela, has already assumed his post in Bogota.
DISCORD AT SEA
Colombia and Nicaragua maintain a dispute before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the continental shelf in the Caribbean Sea.
On Monday of last week, the ICJ asked both countries to present, in the next oral session on the continental shelf off the coast of the Caribbean Sea, only their arguments on the criteria defined by law to determine the delimitation of the territorial sea beyond of the 200 nautical miles (370.4 kilometers) of a country.
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Nicaragua asked the ICJ to grant it a continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from its Caribbean coast, but Colombia defends that the continental shelf of the San Andrés archipelago “unquestionably joins the continental shelf of the Colombian Caribbean coast.” .
The court in The Hague has agreed with Nicaragua and has declared itself competent to judge this case, which has provoked the rejection of Colombia, whose Government has declared that matters between the two States must be resolved through bilateral relations.
