Iran, Iraq reach agreement over Shatt-al-Arab

On February 25 Iran and Iraq both agreed to implement the 1975 Algiers Agreement regulating the dredging the crucial joint waterway, the Shatt-al-Arab, as well as land and river boundaries. The breakthrough settlement was reached in meetings in Tehran between Foreign Ministers Javad Zarif and Hoshyar Zebari and demonstrates the significance of the developing relationship between these two previously hostile West Asian neighbours.

Iran’s Zarif said after the meeting that “Iran and Iraq have historic and solid ties that are based on religious, political, geographical and cultural commonalities, and we are very happy that we have put behind us a short but bitter episode of our history. Today, the friendly and brotherly people of Iraq and Iran have two governments that also wish to have friendly and brotherly relations.” Iraq’s Zebari echoed these sentiments, stating that “Through calm and continuous work in the past two years among expert committees of the two sides, we have reached good agreements on our land and river borders and on the waterways between the two countries.”

During the meeting both sides reviewed the findings of joint technical committee meetings to outline a framework to fully implement the protocols of the 1975 Agreement. This includes the resolution of all outstanding border issues, including re-counting the Talouk border, dredging, removing drowned bodies, environmental considerations and mutual regulation of navigation rights. These agreements were then drafted into a Memorandum of Understanding to be signed within the coming weeks.

Dispute over the border line through the vital waterway into the Gulf was one of the key reasons which led Iraq to declare war on Iran in 1980. Since Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, however, both neighbours have been in the process of forging a strategic partnership, with bilateral trade amounting to US$12 billion last year.

According to our Editor of Iran Strategic Focus, Bijan Khajehpour,  “Iraq is not only an important trading partner for Iran, but also represents a significant piece in the country’s regional strategy, which aims to have solid relations with all immediate neighbours. Improved ties with all neighbouring countries are at the core of Tehran’s national security doctrine. Iraq occupies a special place in that respect because of the historic hostilities as well as Iraq's status as an Arab nation with a long strategic border with Iran.”

India's Modi attacks China's territorial aims

On 23 February, Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi travelled to Arunachal Pradesh, close to a disputed Himalayan border, to hold an election rally in which he bluntly warned China against its territorial ambitions. Modi, who is currently the front-runner in the race to become India’s next prime minister, said that China "will have to leave behind its mind-set of expansion".

China’s Foreign Ministry on 24 February dismissed the latest comments, denying the country had expansionist territorial ambitions, instead framing the decades-long dispute as a sensitive hangover from history. A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, replied by saying that "you can all see in history China has never actively launched a war of aggression to invade and occupy one inch of territory".

This rather diplomatic response is in stark contrast to the recent comments made by Beijing towards Tokyo, where it has also been accused of robust territorial aims in the East China Sea. Many see the unusually muted stance towards India as purely strategic, coming as it does in an election year. Worryingly for China, Japan’s Premier Shinzo Abe recently visited New Delhi and signed various peace and trade agreements with India’s incumbent Manmohan Singh in a bid to bolster ties between to the two nations.

India-China relations have been tense and prone to flare-ups since the two fought a border war in 1962, which saw tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. When Britain withdrew as the colonial power and granted independence to India in 1947, it left behind a myopic legacy of clumsily demarcated borders between India and its northern neighbours. The disputed land covers an area of 150,000 km² along a 4,000 km frontier that has never been explicitly delineated. This is problematic, given that both countries account for around one third of the world's population, with a total GDP of over US$10 trillion.

In the last 50 years, the Asian giants have held 16 rounds of talks in an effort to settle their border dispute, almost to no avail. A border pact was signed in Beijing on 23 October 2013 following territorial incursions that brought tensions to the fore last year. Both sides have pledged to increase bilateral trade to US$100 billion by 2015, following a 20% drop in Indian exports to China last year.

ICJ defines Peru-Chile maritime border

On 27 January the UN court at The Hague delivered its eagerly awaited verdict on the bitter Peru-Chile maritime dispute. Judges at the ICJ awarded parts of the Pacific Ocean to Peru, the claimant in this case, while keeping considerable, rich fishing waters within Chile’s borders. The disputed territory amounted to 38,000 km² of some of the world’s richest fishing grounds, invaluable to these two Latin American nations, both of whom being the world’s biggest exporters of fishmeal.

Following Peru’s application to the ICJ in 2008, the Court yesterday allocated 20,000 km² to the claimant, with control over an additional 28,000 km² of Pacific international waters. The Peruvian President, Ollanta Humala, said that he was pleased with the outcome and would “take the required actions and measures immediately for its prompt implementation". Lima wanted the maritime boundary to extend out in a south westerly direction, contiguous to the land border.

Santiago disagreed with this interpretation, believing instead that the boundary should lie parallel to the equator, based on bilateral treaties signed in the 1950s. “Its position throughout the proceedings was that the Parties had already delimited the whole maritime area in dispute, by agreement, in 1952, and that, accordingly, no maritime delimitation should be performed by the Court,” the judges said.  Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet said she would begin implementing the ruling gradually, despite citing it as a “painful loss”.

In its final ruling, the Court “defined the course of the maritime boundary between the Parties without determining the precise geographical co-ordinates. Moreover, the Court has not been asked to do so in the Parties’ final submissions. The Court expects that the Parties will determine these co-ordinates in accordance with the present Judgment, in the spirit of good neighbourliness.” However, it did say that the boundary should begin at the same point that it does now. 

US proposal for Lebanon Israel maritime boundary

It was reported this week that the US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Diplomacy, Amos Hochstein, was in Beirut recently to propose a new solution to Lebanon's maritime boundary dispute with Israel. He suggested a blue line be drawn around the contested area, so that no hydrocarbons exploration activity would take place until a comprehensive and binding resolution between both parties had been reached. A similar blue line was drawn in June 2000 by the UN to demarcate the contested land border between the two Levantine states.

The tangled maritime border has contributed to rising tensions over potential natural gas riches in the eastern Mediterranean. The US Geological Survey estimated in 2010 that the Levant Basin may contain two billion barrels of oil and well over one hundred trillion cubic feet of gas. Neither Israel nor Lebanon has been willing to compromise on its territorial claims for fear of missing out on these much-needed oil and gas reserves.

Earlier this year, Israel's Arab northern neighbour announced a pre-qualification round for offshore exploration, with scores of IOCs showing real interest in potential drilling contracts in Block 9, adjacent to the contested area. Israel responded by announcing its intention to exploit the Karish-1 offshore field near Block 9. Both sides are wary of the other siphoning off these reserves through various horizontal and diagonal drilling techniques. This proposal by the US may go some way to easing tensions in the short-term, however, the underlying issue remains that Israel and Lebanon have not formally demarcated their maritime borders.

In 2007, a bilateral agreement was signed between Lebanon and Cyprus on the delimitation of the former's Exclusive Economic Zone but, in protest at the 2010 bilateral agreement between Cyprus and Israel, it has never been ratified by the Lebanese government. This dispute, as well as Turkish political pressure on Lebanon, has also held up the ratification of the 2007 Lebanese-Cypriot agreement, despite the existence of clauses in these agreements to accommodate for amendments.

The disputed area totals 874km². Israel plots its maritime border with Cyprus as beginning at Point 1, which coincided with the final point demarcated between Lebanon and Cyprus. Beirut argues, however, that this final coordinate was deliberately chosen because it was in uncontested Lebanese waters and that the de jure border should actually lie 17km further at Point 23.

For further information on maritime borders in the eastern Mediterranean, please visit our Border Focus page.

India and China sign border pact

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a peace pact in Beijing on 23 October, aimed at easing tension along their disputed Himalayan border. The two Asian neighbours have seen tensions resurface this year in the form of incursions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), following decades of disagreement as to the demarcation of the boundary. However, the pact, seen by many as an interim measure, was signed amid comments from Singh that “it will take time to resolve”, stressing that this was not an “easy issue”.

Entitled “Border Defence Co-operation”, this agreement is the fifth such arrangement made between China and India in the last 20 years. It sets out the terms of engagement, committing the armed forces on both sides of the border to “maximum self-restraint” to prevent any unwarranted exchange of fire. Nevertheless, there is also an ambiguous tone to much of the document. Article VI precludes either side from following the other's patrols if they venture into “areas where there is no common understanding of the line of actual control”, essentially giving tacit consent to incursions into neighbouring territory.

The disputed land covers an area of 150,000 km² along a 4,000 km frontier that has never been explicitly delineated. This is problematic, given that both countries account for around one third of the world's population, with a total GDP of over $10 trillion. Premier Li says their relationship is “the most important bilateral friendship in the world”, which is not necessarily hyperbole. If accidental war were to break out as a result of their rift over this border, it would have untold effect on their respective economic output and could result in significant loss of life. The Sino-Indian War of 1962 saw tens of thousands of casualties from the largely land-based warfare that was waged in harsh, mountainous conditions.

The war was sparked, in part, by China's construction of a strategic highway in the 1950s linking western Tibet with its province of Xinjiang. Eventually the Indian authorities discovered that the road crossed southwards into what it considered to be its territory, based on the Johnson Line, a 19 ^th century colonial border delineated by the British surveyor, W H Johnson. When Britain eventually withdrew as the colonial power and granted independence to India in 1947, it left behind a myopic legacy of clumsily drawn borders between India and its northern neighbours, with no measures, other than palliative ones, taken to address this issue.

In the last 50 years, the Asian giants have held 16 rounds of talks in an effort to settle their border dispute, almost to no avail. Both sides have pledged to increase bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015, following a 20% drop in Indian exports to China last year.

Venezuela, Guyana tensions rise after ship seizure

The Venezuelan and Guyanese governments are set to meet Thursday to discuss the fate of a survey ship, used by oil firm Anadarko, which was seized from Guyanese waters last Thursday. Venezuela accused the ship of violating its territorial waters, while Guyana has called the “unprecedented” move a serious threat to security. The diplomatic meeting set to take place in Trinidad & Tobago is aimed at forestalling any further confrontation between the two nations, whose unresolved borders have been a source of conflict for over a century.

According to Guyana's foreign ministry, Venezuelan ship Yekuana ordered the vessel RV Teknik Perdana, which Caracas deemed to be in its Exclusive Economic Zone, to stop surveying and subsequently escorted it to the island of Margarita. The ship was being used by Texas-based Anadarko, who were awarded a deep-water exploration licence for the Roraima block by Georgetown in June 2012. The company said it was “co-operating fully” with both governments, the US Coast Guard and embassy officials.

The discovery back in 2011 of significant hydrocarbons deposits offshore French Guyana has dramatically increased the presence of IOCs prospecting for fields in the north eastern region of South America. Since then, a Venezuelan naval detachment has been placed in the disputed Essequibo area, located between the Cuyuni River to the west and the Essequibo River to the east and covering 159,500 km2, to ward off Guayanese patrols.

The maritime boundary between the two Latin American nations is unsettled largely because the land boundary between the two is still contested. In the nineteenth century, the border was effectively drawn up by the British, which became a bone of contention with Venezuela. US-backed arbitration in 1899 set a line largely in Britain's favour, but the claim was revived in the 1960s.

Since becoming independent in 1966, Guyana has administered the territory, but Venezuela insists that the boundary is a colonial hangover which is null and void, and refers to the disputed area as a “zone of reclamation”. The recent ship seizure is unlikely to escalate into anything serious, with both sides working towards a cordial, diplomatic resolution, but until the outlines of a settlement are reached, it introduces a further degree of uncertainty into regional oil and gas exploration.

Nicaragua files new lawsuit against Colombia

Nicaragua has instituted proceedings against Colombia once again over a dispute concerning maritime borders in the oil-rich Caribbean Sea. According to the ICJ, the “dispute concerns the delimitation of the boundaries between, on the one hand, the continental shelf of Nicaragua beyond the 200-nautical-mile limit from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea of Nicaragua is measured, and on the other hand, the continental shelf of Colombia”. Nicaragua now contends that its “continental margin extends more than 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea of Nicaragua is measured.”

The new claim was made following comments from Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, who rejected the previous ruling by the ICJ in November 2012 following an 11-year case between the two neighbours, saying that a resolution could only be achieved through a bilateral accord. That ruling, entitled “Territorial and Maritime Dispute (Nicaragua v.Colombia),” stipulated that the ownership of the San Andres islands would remain with Colombia, but that the waters east of the 82^ndmeridian, surrounding the uninhabited archipelago, would fall within Nicaragua's economic zone, a decision that President Daniel Ortega celebrated at the time. In response, Santos said that Colombia no longer recognised the jurisdiction of the ICJ and subsequently threatened to pull out of the Bogota Treaty of 1948, which recognises the court's rulings.

Colombia's recent remarks come amid news that Nicaragua intends to auction off dozens of offshore oil blocks in the disputed 11,000km²waters in the south western Caribbean Sea, thought not only to be rich in shrimp and lobster, but also oil and gas. Last month Bogota's Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin wrote a letter to Managua in protest at what she regards as the flagrant courting of IOCs by her northern neighbour.

The two sides have been debating the maritime border since 1819, when they became independent from Spain. They settled the border and the sovereignty of various Caribbean islands in 1928, but in 1980 Nicaragua's revolutionary Sandinista government annulled the treaty, claiming that it was signed under pressure from Washington. However the ICJ said in 2007 that the treaty remained valid.

San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina lie 775km off the Colombian coast and 230km off Nicaragua's.

Tensions heighten between Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Costa Rica's Foreign Minister, Enrique Castillo, announced that his country was forced to shut its consulate in Managua over the weekend following a series of demonstrations against the embassy and its staff. Castillo, who labelled the protestors as “xenophobic”, said that they came up against demonstrators even after relocating to another site outside the capital. Costa Rican residents of Nicoya have a planned a counter-demonstration for tomorrow.

The marches follow news last week that Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega threatened to make a claim, through the ICJ, on the Costa Rican domain of Guanacaste at celebrations marking the 33^rd anniversary of Nicaragua's navy. Costa Rica's Ambassador to the UN, Eduardo Ulibarri, responded to the statement some days later on CNN, saying that over a dozen letters had been sent to the UN Security Council in protest at what he deemed to be “constant provocations” by Ortega, saying that the latest was “ disrespectful…from the point of view of Costa Rica's territorial integrity.”

On 14 August, the day after Ortega's naval celebration statement, Nicaragua publicly announced that the Ocean Saratoga, an offshore drilling platform owned by Noble Energy, had initiated drilling the country's first exploratory oil well 168km offshore Bluefields on the Caribbean coast. The exploration, set to finish in mid-November, will drill to a depth of nearly 3.5km. The Latin American neighbours are in a singular position in that they lack any treaty delimiting their maritime borders, despite sharing two coastal areas. Bilateral negotiations began in 2002, but came to an abrupt halt in 2005 after Costa Rica presented a formal request against Nicaragua to the ICJ regarding rights of navigation in the San Juan River, what many have called the “ sanjuanización” of the bilateral agenda.

Proceedings were then instituted by Costa Rica against Nicaragua in 2010, over the alleged occupation of Costa Rican territory in relation to dredging of the San Juan River. They argue that this activity violated their territorial rights, as spelled out in the 1858 Cañas-Jerez Treaty and the 1888 Cleveland Award, which awarded ownership of the River to Nicaragua, although commercial navigation rights were afforded to Costa Rica.

The second proceedings were instituted by Nicaragua against Costa Rica in December of the following year, citing “major environmental damages” in its territory resulting from major works, namely the construction of a road on the Costa Rican side of the border. Then, on 6 August 2012, Nicaragua filed four counter-claims in the first case, which were raised objectionably by Costa Rica to the ICJ, as well as Managua's request that the two cases be joined.