Cambodia ‘playing the victim’ in sea dispute, says Thailand

Thailand accused Cambodia on Tuesday of playing the victim in their dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbours took their feud to international mediators a year after deadly clashes over their land border. Cambodia, which initiated the case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in Singapore, said it hoped the hearings would yield a peaceful resolution for both countries. In May this year, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a bilateral framework agreement signed in 2001 that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute. Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to return to constructive negotiations. Presenting Bangkok’s case before a five-member panel of international legal experts, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Cambodia sought to “vilify Thailand through false narratives, distortion of facts, and unfounded accusations … including at international forums”. “It does this by playing the role of a victim with a sense of self-righteousness aimed at claiming the moral high ground,” he said in his opening statement. Last year’s clashes in July and December left dozens of people dead and displaced more than a million before a truce was agreed. Thailand has said it withdrew from the framework agreement because “no progress had been made” in implementing it. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied the move was linked to the fighting. The 2001 memorandum of understanding, commonly referred to as MoU 44 as it was signed in the Buddhist year 2544, covers a resource-rich maritime territory of around 27,000 square kilometres to which both Cambodia and Thailand lay claim. The area is estimated to hold nearly 12 trillion ​cubic ⁠feet of natural gas and large quantities of oil with a value of about $300 billion. Cambodia said last week that it had resorted to conciliation “after Thailand unilaterally terminated the agreed bilateral framework” through which the two nations had “negotiated their overlapping maritime claims for more than two decades”. 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”. Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn said in his statement to the PCA panel on Tuesday that Phnom Penh saw the process “as a means to rebuild trust, not as a form of escalation”. Cambodia’s goal was to agree with Thailand on a “single, all-purpose maritime boundary”, or alternatively agree to jointly develop and equitably share resources until a boundary is drawn, he said. “Our overriding objective is to achieve a resolution that serves the people of both nations and contribute to peace, cooperation, and share prosperity in the region,” Prak Sokhonn said. “Cambodia sincerely hopes that Thailand will engage constructively in this process,” he added. Despite his rhetoric, Mr Sihasak said Thailand was also seeking maritime delimitation and to rebuild trust. “Thailand enters this conciliation in good faith, fully mindful of the provisions of Unclos,” he said, referring to the United Nations Convention ​on the Law ⁠of the Sea (Unclos). “Thailand stands ready to engage in this process constructively with the aim of achieving with the commission’s assistance a negotiated and equitable solution,” he said. Analysts have said that both Thailand’s withdrawal from the 2001 MoU and Cambodia’s conciliation case were driven by domestic political calculations. The UN-backed mechanism has, so far, ‌only been used ⁠by East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, ​to successfully resolve a decades-long maritime dispute with Australia. Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world’s oldest intergovernmental dispute-resolution body and resolves issues 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. 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.