Bolivia, Paraguay reaches border agreement

Bolivia and Paraguay have settled a long-running dispute over the Chaco region of South America.

With Argentine President Cristina Kirchner serving as a guarantor, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo and Bolivia’ Evo Morales signed the deal on Monday in Buenos Aires. Lugo and Morales agreed to resolve their differences over the Chaco area which was the basis for the bloody Chaco War in the 1930s.

Both presidents called for a new era of diplomacy between Bolivia and Paraguay yet also blamed the Chaco War on “foreign interests”:

Mr. Morales blamed multi-national oil firms - in their quest for natural resources - for fuelling the Chaco war, which claimed 100,000 lives.

The key energy companies operating in the region at the time were US Standard Oil, backed by Bolivia, and the Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil Company, supported by Paraguay.

President Lugo expressed the hope that natural resources could now "be developed and used by both countries without any foreign intervention."

The Chaco region is over 400,000 square miles in size and has been dubbed as "the last South American frontier".

Image- daylife.com (The Chaco region was hit hard by a drought last year which affected livestock and the sparsely populated indigenous peoples living there).
Online Sources- momento24.com, Wikipedia, BBC News, PRESS TV