Nicaragua plays the victim, Bogota tells UN court

Colombia on Monday accused Nicaragua of "wanting to play the victim" when taking its disputes to the International Court of Justice, where the two Latin American countries are locked in a bitter maritime border battle.

"It is shocking to see how Nicaragua wants to play the victim," Colombia's former attorney general Carlos Gustavo Arrieta Padilla told judges at the UN's highest court in The Hague on the first of a five-day public hearing.

Although the two countries share no land borders diplomatic relations have been strained for almost a century over disputed maritime boundaries in the Caribbean Sea.

Managua "manufactures a dispute when there is none" and then "turns too often" to the ICJ, set up in 1946 to rule in disputes between countries, Arrieta said.

Nicaragua has dragged Bogota before the court saying the South American country has not complied with a 2012 ICJ order which handed Nicaragua vast swathes of the Caribbean Sea.

Managua also asked the court to delimit the maritime boundary between the two countries beyond 200 nautical miles off the Nicaraguan coastline.

Bogota is now challenging the ICJ's jurisdiction to make a ruling in Nicaragua's two complaints, which will see Nicaragua present its counter-arguments on Tuesday.

An ICJ ruling in November 2012 established a new maritime boundary between Nicaragua and Colombia giving Managua several thousand square kilometres (miles) of territory that previously belonged to Colombia.

The court however also recognised Colombia's sovereignty of a number of islands claimed by Nicaragua and which are now sea-locked by the newly-awarded Nicaraguan territorial waters.

Bogota has expressed fears for the islands' inhabitants, including fishing rights.

Source: AFP