Preah Vihear: Thailand opposes the use of the Dangrek card
The border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia can be resolved in the Thai-Cambodian Joint Boundary Commission and not by using the arbitrary boundary line on the Dangrek map, which killed Thailand in 1962.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) should declare the case inadmissible because it does not fall within the Court's jurisdiction. It should state that the 1962 verdict is not binding on the border. That verdict says nothing about the area around the temple.
This was argued by Virachai Plasai, ambassador to the Netherlands and delegation leader of the Thai legal team, in his final speech in The Hague on Friday. This brought an end to the oral explanations of both countries in the Preah Vihear case.
Cambodia spoke on Monday and Thursday; Wednesday and Friday Thailand. They were in The Hague because Cambodia went to the Court in 2011 with a request to reinterpret the 1962 verdict, in which the temple was assigned to Cambodia. Cambodia wants to elicit a ruling from the Court on the ownership of the 4,6 square kilometers at the temple disputed by both countries.
The Dangrek map (named after the chain on which the temple stands), to which Virachai referred, was drawn in the early 20th century by two French officers at the behest of a joint Franco-Siamese commission negotiating the border between Thailand and French Indochina . The map locates the temple plus the disputed area on Cambodian territory, but it later turned out to contain errors. Because Thailand had not opposed the map for a long time, the Court ruled in 1962 that the temple was on Cambodian territory.
Virachai reiterated that using the map would lead to more conflict between the two countries than it would resolve the current conflict. When the map is projected onto the current topography, numerous inaccuracies and errors will come to light. "There are endless possibilities and they are all arbitrary," says Virachai.
(Source: Bangkok Post, Apr 20, 2013)
It doesn't say "on Cambodian territory." It says on territory under sovereignty. That's not the same. According to the dictionary, the American description of territory is: an area that does not yet have all rights, a mandate area.
Furthermore, the Thai name is Phra Viharn. The name you use is Cambodian and we don't live there.
It was interesting to follow, albeit with some poor reception at times that cut out some words. I was happy for a long time that there was an English broadcast on the Kanchanaburi TV channel. Let's hope that a Solomon's judgment will bring peace to the region.
@ henkw True, but that is fodder for lawyers. Here is the quote from 1962:
1 The Court, by nine votes to three, finds that the Temple of Preah Vihear is situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia;
2 Finds in consequence, by nine votes to three, that Thailand is under an obligation to withdraw any military or police forces, or other guards or keepers, stationed by her at the Temple, or in its vicinity on Cambodian territory.
Bangkok Post uses the name Preah Vihear, not the Thai name.