Gibralta appeals to courts on Spanish fishing

The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, has challenged the Spanish government before the international court for maritime law to defend its claims on the waters surrounding the Rock, following a recent ban on Spanish fishing craft from those waters. "In that court we shall demonstrate that we are in the right. But Spain does not want to appear before the Court, perhaps because it is none too sure of its position," Mr Picardo said in a TV interview, as reported by the media today. The Minister maintained that his government is not preventing Spanish fishermen from fishing in the contested waters, but from using fishing methods that have been outlawed since 1991. Mr Picardo stated that a subsequent accord signed by the Spanish government with Gibraltar in 1999, which allows fishing, "is in violation of the law", which is why it has been breached unilaterally by the island. He went on to stress how "it is a great shame that the executive led by Mariano Rajoy appears to have abandoned the tripartite forum," promoted by the preceding Socialist government between Spain, the UK and Gibraltar, while assuring that his administration would continue to believe in " dialogue". As for the government-imposed absence from Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee celebrations of Queen Sofia of Spain, Mr Picardo defined the decision "an 18th century reaction in the 21st century". Under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, Spain ceded the city and castle of Gibraltar to the British crown along with its port and fortifications, but not the isthmus of Gibraltar, nor its territorial waters and air space. Management of t he waters has been an on-going source of disputes between Madrid and London, with an intensification over recent weeks when around sixty fishing vessels from the Spanish cities of La Linea and Algesiras were prohibited from fishing, in a unilateral breach of the 1999 agreement by the former British colony.(ANSAmed).