House panel calls for review of MOU44 before starting talks on OCA
The committee also urged the government to discuss the issue in Parliament as it was too large a matter to be decided upon by a few people
The House panel on energy affairs said the government should review the memorandum of understanding signed with Cambodia in 2001 before holding negotiations about the marine boundaries in the Gulf of Thailand.
It also said on Thursday that the government should add the issue to the House agenda when Parliament reconvenes next month.
These suggestions were made by People’s Party MP Supachot Chaiyasat, who is deputy chair of the committee.
He was speaking to reporters after the House panel, chaired by United Thai Nation Party MP Wachiraporn Kanchana, met on Thursday to discuss the progress made in demarcating the overlapping claims areas (OCA) in the Gulf for sharing petroleum resources.
The panel invited representatives from the Foreign Ministry’s Treaties and Legal Affairs Department, the Energy Ministry’s Mineral Fuels Department, the Defence Ministry’s Permanent Secretariat and the Royal Thai Navy to testify.
Supachot said representatives of the treaties department affirmed that the so-called MOU44 was needed to serve as a framework for holding negotiations over the OCA boundaries. However, he said, he believes the memorandum should be reviewed because more than 20 years have passed since it was signed.
He added that the meeting only discussed the option of reviewing the MOU, not cancelling it. He said the committee believes this issue should be debated in Parliament because it was too large an issue to be handled by just a few people.
Supachot added that the treaties department representatives explained that talks had to be carried out on both the demarcation of marine boundaries as well as the sharing of natural resources.
The negotiations will be based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS 1982), while maps attached to the MOU44 had no legal binding.
He said the treaties department representatives explained that the maps were only meant for both sides to see each other’s claims.
Meanwhile, the Mineral Fuels Department reminded the House panel that it took Thailand 25 years to reach an agreement with Malaysia to jointly develop petroleum fields in the two countries’ OCAs.
Supachot said the representatives told the panel that the Cabinet was in the process of appointing Thai members to the Thai-Cambodia Joint Technical Committee before negotiations can kick off.
He said the House panel wanted the Cabinet to appoint energy experts to the joint panel, instead of just appointing experts on boundary demarcation.
