ICJ ends hearings on Nicaragua-Colombia border row

AMSTERDAM, June 8 (Reuters) The UN's highest court ended hearings on Friday into a centuries-old border dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia over a tiny group of isolated Caribbean islands and surrounding fishing waters.

Nicaragua had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to grant it sovereignty over the archipelago and to end the row which Colombia says started nearly 200 years ago and was settled more than 70 years ago.

The countries, separated by Panama and Costa Rica, both lay claim to the isolated Caribbean Islands San Andres and Providencia off Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, as well as several keys and some 50,000 square km of rich fishing waters.

Colombia's representative Sir Arthur Watts told the court this week that border disputes were inevitable after the fall of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, but that the one in question was ''definitively settled'' in 1928, when Nicaragua and Colombia signed a treaty granting Colombia sovereignty over the islands.

But Nicaragua's Sandinista government in the 1980s annulled the accord, arguing it was signed while Nicaragua was under US military occupation.

''Let us be clear, Nicaragua is asking the court to set aside a 75-year-old treaty settlement: Nicaragua is asking the court to rewrite history,'' Watts said.

Nicaragua denies that the dispute was settled.

''First in 1977 and then in 1995, two different Colombian presidents and governments, publicly announced negotiations with Nicaragua on maritime delimitation and other issues presently before the court'', the country's representative and ambassador to the Netherlands Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez said.

''Colombia now denies that any issues were left pending by the 1928 treaty and yet two different Colombian governments tell a radically different story'', he told the judges.

Many Nicaraguans consider the treaty a U.S. payoff to Colombia for arranging the independence of Panama from Colombia in order to build the Panama Canal.

The islands and keys in question also fall within the maritime borders of Costa Rica, Honduras and Jamaica.

Nicaragua sued Colombia in 2001, two years after it also took neighbouring Honduras to the ICJ, arguing it was forced to act after Honduras and Colombia agreed their own border.

In this treaty, Honduras and Colombia carved up between them 130,000 square km of Atlantic waters traditionally claimed by Nicaragua. The area is rich in fish and, potentially, oil and natural gas.

In retaliation, Nicaragua slapped a 35 percent tariff on imports from Honduras.

The ICJ, or World Court, opened the hearing in this case in March. The Court, based in The Hague, hears disputes between states and its decisions are founded in international law. Its rulings are binding and without appeal.

Reuters SLD GAC1747