SINGAPORE: Thailand accused Cambodia on Tuesday of \u201cplaying the role of a victim\u201d in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbours brought their long-standing feud before international mediators.<\/p>\n
The hearing at the Singapore outpost of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) comes after the countries fought two rounds of deadly border clashes last year.<\/p>\n
In May this year, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a framework agreement with Cambodia that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute.<\/p>\n
Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to return to constructive negotiations.<\/p>\n
Opening Bangkok\u2019s case before a five-member panel of international legal experts, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Cambodia sought to \u201cvilify Thailand through false narratives, distortion of facts, and unfounded accusations… including at international forums\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does this by playing the role of a victim with a sense of self-righteousness aimed at claiming the moral high ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s clashes left dozens of people dead and displaced more than a million before a truce was agreed.<\/p>\n
Thailand has said it withdrew from the framework agreement, called \u201cMoU 44\u201d, because \u201cno progress had been made\u201d in implementing it. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied the move was linked to the fighting.<\/p>\n
The 2001 memorandum of understanding covers a resource-rich maritime territory of around 27,000 square kilometres (10,500 square miles) to which both Cambodia and Thailand lay claim.<\/p>\n
Cambodia said last week that it had resorted to conciliation \u201cafter Thailand unilaterally terminated the agreed bilateral framework\u201d through which the two nations had \u201cnegotiated their overlapping maritime claims for more than two decades\u201d.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Hun Manet said in June that the move was also to \u201cprotect Cambodia\u2019s sovereignty and maritime rights in accordance with international law\u201d.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn told the PCA panel on Tuesday that Phnom Penh saw the process \u201cas a means to rebuild trust, not as a form of escalation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Cambodia\u2019s goal was to agree with Thailand on a \u201csingle, all-purpose maritime boundary\u201d, or alternatively agree to jointly develop and equitably share resources until a boundary is drawn, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCambodia sincerely hopes that Thailand will engage constructively in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sihasak said Thailand was also seeking maritime delimitation and to rebuild trust.<\/p>\n
Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world\u2019s oldest intergovernmental dispute-resolution body and resolves disputes between countries and private parties by referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.<\/p>\n
The PCA office in Singapore is the Hague-based court\u2019s first in Asia.<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s recommendations are not binding and will take about a year to be decided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SINGAPORE: Thailand accused Cambodia on Tuesday of \u201cplaying the role of a victim\u201d in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbours brought their long-standing feud before international mediators. The hearing at the Singapore outpost of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) comes after the countries fought two rounds of deadly border clashes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":102984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102985,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102969\/revisions\/102985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}