Thailand Says It Will Join UN-Backed Conciliation on Maritime Dispute With Cambodia |
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Thailand Says It Will Join UN-Backed Conciliation on Maritime Dispute With Cambodia
Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said that Bangkok will cease all other bilateral talks while mediation is in progress.
A view of Bang Bao Bay on the Thai island of Koh Kut at sunset.
Thailand says that it will join a U.N. arbitration process to resolve a maritime boundary dispute with Cambodia, but expressed regret at Phnom Penh’s decision to seek international mediation for the dispute.
Last week, Cambodia officially notified Thailand that it was seeking compulsory conciliation under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to resolve a long-running maritime border dispute in the Gulf of Thailand. This came after Bangkok unilaterally withdrew from a 2001 agreement with Cambodia that established a framework for joint offshore energy exploration and the demarcation of maritime boundaries in the area.
Speaking to reporters in Bangkok on Friday, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said that Thailand would appoint two conciliators to take part in the process, but expressed dismay at Cambodia’s decision to seek conciliation.
“Both sides should have spoken bilaterally first,” Sihasak said. “If we had talked and there was no progress, then we could go to UNCLOS.”
In separate comments to Reuters, the Thai foreign minister added that as long as the UNCLOS process was moving forward, Bangkok would not hold any other two-way talks. This includes efforts to manage and resolve the ongoing disputes over the land border, which erupted twice into armed conflict last year.
“We will use UNCLOS, which means from now on there will be no more talks … or other forms of cooperation,” he told the news agency, adding that all of the border gates between the two nations would remain closed. “We will not discuss the restoration of relations yet,” Sihasak said.
However, Thailand’s call for bilateral talks is undermined somewhat by its decision to withdraw from the 2001 MoU. This was specifically set up to provide a framework for negotiations between Phnom Penh and Bangkok over a 26,000-square-kilometer area in the Gulf of Thailand that is known as the Overlapping Claims Area (OCA). The OCA, which has been disputed since the early 1970s, is estimated to hold abundant reserves of oil and natural gas, the exploitation of which has become more pressing amid the current global oil supply crisis.
In announcing the decision to withdraw from the agreement last month, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul cited the lack of progress in the talks under the MoU. However, a major reason for this lack of progress is the chronic instability in Thai domestic politics. The 2001 MoU has long been opposed by Thai nationalists, who argue that it could lead to the loss of Thai sovereignty over Koh Kood, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. Indeed, tensions over the question of Koh Kood led to the collapse of bilateral talks on the OCA in late 2024, arguably contributing to the resumption of the dispute over the land border in the first half of 2025.
Last week, I expressed some skepticism that Thailand would join the process under UNCLOS, citing its long preference for bilateral negotiations. Last year,........