Jose Luis Bustamante, 93; Former President of Peru

LIMA, Peru â€”  Former President Jose Luis Bustamante, a World Court judge credited with pioneering the 200-mile territorial sea limit, died Wednesday. A government spokesman said he was 93.

Bustamante, deposed in a military coup in 1948 and later forced to live in exile, also was past president of the U.N. International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, and later became senator-for-life in the Peruvian Congress, an honor bestowed on the nation’s democratically elected presidents on leaving office.

The government spokesman said Bustamante died at a military hospital here of coronary complications resulting from deteriorating health over the last three years. He had been hospitalized under intensive care since Dec. 10.

Bustamante, a politically independent lawyer, became president in 1945 and headed a centrist coalition government until 1948, when he was toppled in the coup headed by Gen. Manuel Odria, who became provisional president.

In 1947 Bustamante had decreed that Peruvian sovereignty extended 200 miles out to sea. The action set a precedent that has since been adopted by dozens of other nations.

After returning from a brief exile, Bustamante guided the world court from 1967 to 1970. He was also Peru’s ambassador to Uruguay and Bolivia and in 1978, mediated a peaceful end to a border conflict between El Salvador and Honduras.