Слике страница
PDF
ePub

because the three-mile rule is, as shown by this treaty, a principle of international law applicable to coasts which must be strictly and systematically applied to bays. But the tribunal is unable to agree with this contention, because admittedly the geographical character of a bay contains conditions which concern the interests of the territorial sovereign to a more intimate and important extent than do those connected with the open coast. Thus conditions of national and territorial integrity, of defense, of commerce and of industry are all vitally concerned with the control of the bays penetrating the national coast line." 1

The same award notes the treaty concluded in 1846 between Great Britain and the United States by which both ended the joint ownership and co-dominion of the waters of the Strait of Fuca, reciprocally and exclusively assigning to themselves the ownership thereof over an expanse as broad as seventeen miles from their respective shores. The existence of various islands belonging to Salvador and Honduras within the gulf of Fonseca is another reason which lends force to the cited doctrines of law on which rest the rights of Salvador which my Government deems impaired by the concession it is proposed to give the United States for the establishment of a naval station, which would not only of necessity restrict the said rights but also jeopardize highly important interests of Salvador and Honduras.

It must be noted that the interests and rights ceded by Nicaragua to the United States are much less in value and valuation than those of Honduras and Salvador.

As a matter of fact Nicaragua has no port of entry within the gulf of Fonseca whose waters are common to the three States and the ports of Corinto and San Juan del Sur would not come within the zone of influence appertaining to the naval base it is proposed to establish within the gulf. That influence and the predominance flowing therefrom would strongly affect the exercise of the revenue and police rights of Honduras and Salvador which are of great importance to them and would be overridden by such measures of police and safety as the United States might order for the conservation and protection of its naval base.

And, in case of war between the United States and some other maritime power, the three countries that own the gulf would unavoidably become involved in grave danger and most serious difficulties to maintain and defend their neutrality; their territorial waters within the gulf being furthermore turned into a theater of belligerency and surrounded by all the calamities that go with armed conflicts..

These dangers and difficulties are enhanced when it is considered that Salvador and Honduras have, within the gulf, two large ports of entry, La Union and Amapala respectively, whereas Nicaragua has none in the bay. Through these ports, both States move a large part of their internal wealth and import staples of trade on a large scale; so that there would be no exaggeration in saying that Nicaragua, by its concession of a naval station, concludes with the United States a convention by which it touches, rather than its own patri

For. Rel. 1910, pp. 562-563.

mony, the vital interests of Salvador and Honduras. Salvador cannot and must not assent to this unauthorized alienation of its rights. On the other hand, the Constitutions of the Central American Republics, especially those of Honduras, Salvador and Nicaragua, have consecrated the principle that the said Republics are segregated parts of the former Central American Federation and hence recognize it as their positive duty to contribute to the restoration of the Central American nationality.

This fundamental duty, which the United States must recognize and respect, incapacitates them, in a manner and measure, from impairing the integrity of Central American territory without the concurrence of the other and more especially at points and in parts where two or more States have common rights and joint interests. Such an alienation would require, besides the collective consent, the plebiscitary authorization of the people whose territorial and jurisdictional rights would be curtailed by the contemplated aliena

tion.

On the strength of these grounds and motives, my Government has given me special instructions respectfully to lodge with your excellency's Government a formal assertion of its rights and interests that would be affected or impaired if the concession were carried out in the Gulf of Fonseca for the establishment of a naval station at any point of the bay, even though it should lie solely within the small part of the coast held by Nicaragua on the said gulf.

On account of the community created by the condition of indivision in the jurisdictional and sovereign rights exercised over the Gulf of Fonseca by the three riparian States it became indispensable to mention the interests and rights of Salvador and Honduras in conjunction as contradistinguished from those of Nicaragua, in the course of this statement; but it is of course to be understood that this protest is exclusively confined to the interests and rights of Salvador in the aforesaid Bay of Fonseca.

Accept [etc.]

FRANCISCO DUEÑAS,

File No. 817.812/55.

No. 32.]

The American Minister to the Secretary of State.

AMERICAN LEGATION, Managua, December 18, 1913. SIR: I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy and translation of a note from the Government of Colombia to that of Nicaragua in which the former protests against Article II of the treaty recently entered into between the United States and Nicaragua whereby is provided a lease to the United States of Great Corn Island and Little Corn Island in the Caribbean Sea.

The Nicaraguan Minister for Foreign Affairs has promised me a copy of his reply as soon as it shall have been prepared.

I have [etc.]

BENJAMIN L. JEFFERSON.

[Inclosure-Translation.]

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua,

FOREIGN OFFICE, REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA,
Bogotá, August 9, 1913.

MR. MINISTER: The Government of Colombia has become acquainted with article 2 of the treaty concluded between Nicaragua and the United States of America. This treaty has been published in various organs of the press of North and South America.

By virtue of the article referred to Nicaragua gives in leasehold to the United States of America the islands in the Caribbean Sea known as Great Corn and Little Corn Islands, over which Colombia has the right of sovereignty by incontestable titles to which my Government has on more than one occasion called the attention of the illustrious Government of Nicaragua, as also has it protested against the usurpation consummated in the islands in question.

The terms of the aforesaid Article 2 of the treaty between Nicaragua and the United States oblige my Government again to enter formal protest against the ignoring of the right of sovereignty of Colombia, and to reiterate the exceptions taken in various notes addressed by my honorable predecessors in this Ministry to the Government of Nicaragua.

The Minister of Colombia at Washington has received instructions to protest formally in the premises to the Department of State of the United States of America.

I avail [etc.].

File No. 817.812/135.

FRANCISCO JOSÉ URRUTIA,

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia.1

[Translation.]

FOREIGN OFFICE, Managua, December 24, 1913. MR. MINISTER: Your excellency's note of September 25 last, in which you enclose a certified copy of the note which your excellency says was addressed to this Department under date of August 9 last 2 through the Legation of Nicaragua at Washington, has been received here, with considerable delay. That and the further circumstance that up to the 22nd instant, as telegraphed by the Legation on that date, no note from the Department of Foreign Relations of Colombia had been received by the Minister of Nicaragua to the United States, will afford your excellency sufficient explanation to excuse the silence heretofore maintained by this Government and its delay in returning a precise and suitably prompt answer to the important questions touched upon by your excellency in the above-mentioned

papers. Your excellency says, in the note of August 9, that the Government of Colombia has become acquainted with Article 2 of the treaty concluded between Nicaragua and the United States of America whereby the former gives in leasehold to the latter the islands in the Caribbean Sea called Great Corn Island and Little Corn, over which your excellency asserts Colombia holds the right of sovereignty by unquestionable titles to which my Government's attention was more than once called by your Government, as it has protested against what your excellency terms usurpation consummated in the said islands.

1 Copy left at the Department of State by the Minister of Nicaragua.
'See inclosure to the foregoing dispatch from Managua.

Your excellency adds that the terms of that convention, which has been published by various periodicals in North and South America, again compel your Government to enter a formal protest against the disregard of Colombia's aforesaid right of sovereignty and to reiterate the reservations made in several notes addressed to my Government by several of your predecessors in your Department, and your excellency concludes with a statement that the Minister of Colombia at Washington has also received instructions to formulate appropriate reservations at the Department of State of the United States of America.

In reply your excellency will permit me to say that inasmuch as the question involves a treaty, not yet perfected, between the Governments of Nicaragua and the United States, to the mutual advantage of both countries, which is kept secret for international reasons that concern the signatory nations only, I cannot enter into considerations of any kind bearing on any of the clauses contained in the said treaty.

But since your excellency, in referring to unofficial press reports on the subject, has taken occasion, in the notes I have the honor to answer, to make declarations about the right of sovereignty of Colombia over the mentioned islands, Great Corn and Little Corn, by turning to the protests of your excellency's predecessors in your Department without adducing further arguments in support of that alleged right, I deem it my duty to adopt and reproduce in this answer those presented in their time to the Chancellery of Colombia by the Ministers of Foreign Relations of Nicaragua-Doctor Adán Cárdenas, in 1880, Doctor Benjamín Guerra in 1890, and Don José Dolores Gámez in 1896-wherein absolute denial is made of any right that Colombia claims or may claim to the Mosquito territory; denial is even made of any possibility to question, with any semblance of justice, the plain and unexceptionable rights of Nicaragua to that territory, and the suggestion of arbitration offered by your excellency's Government is roundly rejected, for the reason that Nicaragua's rights are clear and do not admit discussion and therefore there is no territorial question whatsoever pending between the two nations.

[Here follows a long analysis of the legal history of the case.]

Therefore the dominion of Nicaragua, incontestable in every light over the Atlantic Coast belonging to her between the Republics of Honduras and Costa Rica and over the islands comprised therein, and the non-interrupted possession for four centuries of the said territory and islands, leads me to return to your excellency's Government, Mr. Minister, a definite and concrete answer to the particular point touched on by your excellency in the note of August 9 last, towit: that if Nicaragua did or should lease the Great Corn and Little Corn islands, she did or would do so by virtue of the dominion or sovereignty she holds over them-a dominion and sovereignty that Colombia lacks over Nicaraguan territory, but necessary to an objection to the acts above mentioned.

And I must add here, on the same ground, that in respect to the archipelago of the San Andrés, Vieja Provincia and Santa Catalina islands, and all other islands and keys adjacent to the Mosquito Coast, Nicaragua most solemnly denies any right of sovereignty

Colombia may allege thereto, whether it be attempted to base it on a royal order that was never carried out and was considered as nonexistent from the time it was issued, or on some unlawful possession that bears all the marks of actual forcement; and consequently reserves to herself the right to vindicate at any time her dominion and sovereignty over the said archipelago.

I have [etc.]

DIEGO M. CHAMORRO

FINANCIAL AFFAIRS -CONCLUSION OF A LOAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICAN BANKERS; GOOD OFFICES OF THE UNITED STATES— RELATION OF LOAN FUNDS TO THE MIXED COMMISSION'S AWARDS.

NOTE. On November 4, 1912, Nicaragua entered into an agreement with the New York banking firms of Brown Brothers and Company and J. & W. Seligman & Company whereby the bankers released to Nicaragua $100,000 out of customs moneys received by them as per previous contracts; and set aside $400,000 received by them at the settlement with the Ethelburga Syndicate, to be paid to Nicaragua in such installments as might be agreed on. This agreement was subject to the approval of the Nicaraguan Assembly before it could go into effect; the Assembly's approval had not been given at the time of the beginning of the following correspondence. The correspondence after November 4, 1912 shows nothing but routine affairs up to the following telegram of January 31, 1913.

File No. 817.51/522a.

The Acting Secretary of State to the American Minister.

[Telegram-Paraphrase.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, January 31, 1913.

The Department is informed that the President of Nicaragua wishes to know whether or not the bankers are prepared to accept immediate liquidation, thereby releasing all guaranties except the option on 51% of the railroad, which will not expire before March. President has received, it seems, an offer of financial backing, source not stated.

As to the request for immediate liquidation, you will informally say to President Díaz that it is with great surprise that this Government learns of the proposition, since the financial condition of Nicaragua is quite clearly such as to make impossible the liquidation of its obligations-incurred after long consultation with the United States-merely by applying the revenues to them. This

1 Continued from For. Rel. 1912, pp. 1071-1105. A résumé of Nicaragua's financia! affairs from the signing of the convention of June 6, 1911, will be found, post, in the memorandum of May 22, 1913; a statement of Nicaragua's assets and liabilities, prepared July 15, 1913, follows; and the inclosure with the bankers' letter of November 24 shows the condition of the gold reserve at that time.

2 For. Rel. 1912, p. 1105.

« ПретходнаНастави »