SINGAPORE: Cambodia and Thailand will face off before international mediators in Singapore this week in a long-standing dispute over valuable maritime resources, the latest spat between the feuding neighbours.
Phnom Penh initiated a United Nations-backed conciliation process at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) after Bangkok pulled out of an agreement to work towards joint offshore energy exploitation in the Gulf of Thailand.
The 2001 memorandum of understanding covers a vast and resource-rich territory of around 27,000 sq km to which both Cambodia and Thailand lay claim.
Bangkok in May unilaterally pulled out of the framework agreement, called “MoU 44”, saying that “no progress had been made” in implementing it.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied it was linked to the simmering border conflict with its Southeast Asian neighbour, which erupted into two rounds of clashes last year that left dozens of people dead, and displaced more than a million before a truce was agreed.
Cambodia said last week that it resorted to the conciliation process “after Thailand unilaterally terminated the agreed bilateral framework” through which the two nations had “negotiated their overlapping maritime claims for more than two decades”.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said in June that the move was also to “protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and maritime rights in accordance with international law”.
The two countries’ representatives are set to give their opening statements on Tuesday (Sep 15) before a five-member conciliation panel of international law experts at the world’s oldest arbitration court’s offices, in Singapore.
Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn is expected to open the floor, followed by his Thai counterpart Sihasak Phuangketkeow.
Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world’s oldest intergovernmental dispute-resolution body and resolves disputes between countries and private parties through referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The PCA office in Singapore is the Hague-based court’s first in Asia.
The commission’s recommendations are not binding and will take about a year to be decided.
“LASTING RESOLUTION”
Both Cambodia and Thailand have welcomed the opportunity to put their points across.
“The meeting marks another important milestone in the peaceful process initiated by Cambodia to resolve the countries’ maritime differences,” Cambodia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Phnom Penh said it hopes the process can help Cambodia and Thailand reach a “fair and lasting resolution of their maritime differences” and open a pathway to explore significant oil and gas resources.
Thailand’s energy ministry has estimated future revenues from oil and natural gas in the nations’ overlapping claims area to be worth around US$300 billion.
The Thai foreign ministry said it was “ready to cooperate fully with and support the work of the Conciliation Commission” and remained committed to “safeguarding” its national interests.
An analyst, however, said both Thailand’s withdrawal and Cambodia’s conciliation case were closely linked with domestic politics and the recent conflict.
“It was intended to project strength and to signal to voters that the legacy of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, under whose administration the 2001 MoU was originally drafted, was officially over,” wrote William Jones, an international politics expert at Thailand’s Mahidol University International College.
Meanwhile, Cambodia’s case was a “shrewd political move” on Hun Manet’s part, Jones wrote in current affairs magazine, The Diplomat.
“Having suffered a military defeat on the land border and remaining in an inferior position to its Thai counterpart,” Hun Manet was choosing a legal avenue that “promised low cost and high potential reward”, Jones said.
