Santiago, May 2 (EFE).- The initial tests performed on the exhumed remains of Nobel literature laureate Pablo Neruda show that the Chilean poet was suffering from advanced prostate cancer, officials associated with the process confirmed to Efe. The report from the medical examiner's office was delivered today to Judge Mario Carroza, who is presiding over the effort to determine what killed Neruda, who died on Sept. 23, 1973, 12 days after Gen. Augusto Pinochet toppled Chile's Socialist government in a bloody coup.

Landlocked Bolivia sued neighboring Chile in the Hague on Wednesday as it pressed a longstanding claim to recover land lost in a 19th century war and thus regain access to the Pacific. Chile quickly responded that the issue was not negotiable. In filings to the International Court of Justice, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said the suit "assumes the historical mandate of the Bolivian people" to revert to being a maritime nation. Bolivia has been preparing its legal, historical and economic arguments for the lawsuit for more than two years.

The body of Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda is being exhumed this weekend in an effort to clear up four decades of suspicion about how he died in the days after Chile's military coup. A team of investigators is to begin digging today at Isla Negra, a rocky outcropping on the Pacific Coast where Neruda lived. But forensic experts say there's little hope that the exhumation will answer the question of whether one of the greatest poets of the 20th century died of natural causes as was recorded, or if he was poisoned by the military dictatorship as his driver and some others believe.

The remains of Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda were exhumed Monday to determine if he died of cancer or was poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship he strongly opposed. Workers broke open the tomb housing his remains at his last home overlooking the sea in Isla Negra under the supervision of Judge Mario Carroza, lawyers and a dozen forensic experts. The leftist author, who died 12 days after the 1973 military coup that ousted socialist president Salvador Allende and brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, was long believed to have died of prostate cancer.