BOLIVIAN President Evo Morales is accusing powerful forces in Chile of frustrating bilateral talks on his landlocked country gaining access to the Pacific Ocean.

“At the moment, some people representing the Chilean oligarchies” don’t want negotiations, he said yesterday.

President Morales was speaking after lawyers for Bolivia presented arguments at the International Court of Justice for a second day in the latest attempt to solve the decades-long dispute.

Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile in a war that lasted from 1879 to 1883 and has demanded ocean access for generations.

Chile insists that the issue was settled for good by a 1904 treaty, so Bolivia is now asking the World Court, the highest judicial organ of the United Nations, to order Chile to negotiate access.

“If there is a will for a dialogue, a will to solve this injury in the region, then we have to start with the dialogue and then we can set rules, times. We can have observers and have a dialogue,” Mr Morales said.

“One proposal is a corridor to the Pacific Ocean. That is worthy of discussion,” he added, as he sat in a hotel near the court’s Peace Palace in The Hague.

Chile’s lawyers will present their case  later this week, but a final binding court decision is expected to take months.

The Bolivian president said he was keen to end the dispute, which has long strained bilateral relations.

“Two neighbouring countries, we can’t be in confrontation for the rest of our lives. We have to solve this dispute,” he insisted.