LatinNews Daily Report - 20 September 2013

POLITICS| Santos reaffirms defence of San Andrés. On 19 September President Juan Manuel Santos reiterated that his government would not “cede one inch” of Colombian territory to Nicaragua despite President Daniel Ortega’s latest decision to take a new case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague seeking to extend its continental shelf platform in the Caribbean Sea. Santos made his remarks during a visit to the islands of San Andrés and Providencia islands, the two main islands in the San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina archipelago which, along with other cays and atolls, comprise the eponymous Colombian department directly affected by the maritime dispute with Nicaragua. Santos arrived on San Andrés Island yesterday onboard the Colombian frigate ARC Almirante Padilla after visiting the 82^nd W meridian, which marks the historic boundary between Colombia and Nicaragua. Santos declared to the local community: “We are not going to cede a millimetre of our continental shelf”. Santos’s actions have been ill-received in Managua, where yesterday the foreign relations secretary of the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), Jacinto Suárez, accused him of “adopting a bellicose attitude” by ordering the Colombian frigates ARC Almirante Padilla, ARC 20 de Julio and ARC Caldas to remain and continue patrolling in the disputed waters. Suárez said that without any “judicial grounding” to refute the ICJ’s November 2012 ruling, which awarded part of that territory to Nicaragua, Santos was trying to “intimidate Nicaragua by deploying his frigates”.