Ecuador Does Not Lose Maritime Territory, said Peruvian Minister

José Antonio García Belaunde, Peruvian Foreign Minister, said that Peru should amend the so-called baselines in its maritime border this week after signing an agreement setting those bilateral limits.

According to reports from official news agency Andina, García Belaunde said that the government will send in the coming days a draft to the Congress on this issue. He stressed that the agreement with Ecuador will allow Peru to have more than 4,300 kilometers of territorial waters that are currently in international waters .

“It is a project that we will take (to Congress) next week. It is a bill amending the law of baselines in the far north, so that we can reconcile the two base lines, the Ecuadorian and the Peruvian one,” said the Chancellor, thus confirming that the Government of Ecuador said yesterday, in the sense that Peru had to change the baseline in its internal waters to match with Ecuador in the common maritime border.

On this, García Belaunde explained that this agreement will allow the Ecuador and Peruvian baseline to coincide. Because of this they should change a few (geographical) seconds of the Peruvian baseline and confirmed that this will “convert international and inland waters into Peruvian territory.”

“It is 4,300 kilometers,” he stressed, and then said that this represents a gain for his country and does not affect the territorial sea of Ecuador.

Source: El Universo Newspaper