El Salvador and Honduras on Friday accepted a World Court decision ending a border dispute that contributed to a 1969 war between the two countries and caused tensions for well over a century.
During El Salvador's 12-year civil war, which ended in February, Salvadoran guerrillas took advantage of the conflict by setting up camps in the disputed borderlands, which were known as the "bolsones," or "pockets."The World Court, the judicial arm of the United Nations, gave two-thirds of the disputed area to Honduras and ruled the nations must share the Gulf of Fonseca with neighboring Nicaragua.
The Salvadoran and Honduran presidents met on a bridge over the Goascoran River to hear the decision of the court, issued in The Hague, Netherlands. The ruling was not binding, but both countries had pledged to honor it.
"Today we celebrate with satisfaction that there no longer exist territorial differences among our countries, today each one knows how far his rights extend," President Alfredo Cristiani of El Salvador said.
Rafael Leonardo Callejas, the president of Honduras, said the two Central American countries have shown the world "that any dispute, however complex, can be resolved in a civilized and conciliatory way."
It was the most complicated case the court ever handled, presiding Judge Jose Sette-Camara of Brazil said during the three-hour reading of the ruling. The decision was based on years of deliberation involving 50 court sessions and reviews of precedents in other border disputes. The conflict over the 168 square miles of disputed territory began shortly after independence in 1821.
About 2,000 people died in a brief 1969 "Soccer War," which was provoked by riots during a soccer tournament but grew out of border disputes and other conflicts between the two countries.
Honduras and El Salvador agreed in 1986 to submit their conflict to the World Court.
The decision would leave some nationals of one country on the territory of the other, and Sette-Camara urged both nations to ease any resulting problems.
Although both countries heralded the decision as the definitive end to the border conflict, Alfredo Martinez Moreno, El Salvador's agent at the court, complained that the judges attached too little significance to Spanish colonial documents El Salvador had used to bolster its claims.