Govt told to settle borders with neighbors

Govt told to settle borders with neighbors

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Taking a lesson from the loss of Sipadan and Ligitan islands,
Indonesia needs to uphold its sovereignty by promoting
negotiation to settle disputes over maritime borders with
neighboring countries, a legal expert has said.

Etty R. Agoes, a legal expert at the Ministry for Fisheries
and Maritime Affairs, said on Monday that the country needed to
take effective measures to force each neighboring country to
negotiate its maritime territory through agreements on sea
territory, continental coastline, and exclusive economic zones
(EEZ).

"We must settle all problems of maritime borders otherwise we
will lose more islands and maritime territory. We should improve
our quality of diplomacy and bargaining position so that our
neighboring countries will not be reluctant to negotiate," she
said during a discussion here on Monday.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands
voted overwhelmingly on Dec. 17, to award Sipadan and Ligitan
islands, located on the northernmost tip of East Kalimantan, to
Malaysia.

The decision ended a three-decade-long legal battle between
the neighboring Southeast Asian countries.

Etty, who is also a professor of international law at
Padjadjaran University, Bandung, West Java, said that the country
shared maritime borders with 10 countries and only had land
borders with three countries.

Speaking at a seminar titled: The Future of Indonesian
Maritime Borders, she said that the country so far has made
agreements on its continental coastline with Malaysia, Thailand,
India, Papua New Guinea, and Australia and had only one EEZ
agreement which was with Australia.

Etty said that there were only two agreements on sea territory
that the country has made; with Malaysia in 1970 and Singapore in
1973.

Based on the international convention on the sea, a country's
sea territory is 12 miles from the outermost island, its EEZ is
200 miles, and its continental coastline base is between 200 and
350 miles.

Etty said that the first measure the country should take was
to revise Government Ruling No. 38/2002 on National Maritime
Territory that still included Sipadan and Ligitan islands and
immediately negotiate the country's border with the two islands.

"Hopefully we can repeat the success of the negotiation over
Australia's Christmas island in 1997 that stipulated that the
island's EEZ was 38.75 miles because the island has no fixed
inhabitants while our Java island has almost two hundred million
people. International Law decided that the settlement should be
fair," she said.

Etty added that the country should also settle the problem of
its continental coastline with Vietnam which was located to the
north of Natuna island.

"We have negotiated 20 times in 20 years but no agreement has
ever been made because each meeting has started from zero. We
should improve our negotiation team because Vietnam now is backed
by Canada," she said.

Etty said that the country should also discuss maritime border
problems with Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, East Timor,
Palau, and Malaysia.

First Adm. Soesetyo, head of the hydro-oceanography division
at the Naval Headquarters, said that it was also high time for
the country to discuss Singapore's reclamation program because it
could threaten the country's sovereignty.

"Singapore has combined eight islands into Jurong island
through reclamation and enlarged its territory by 3.5 kilometers
to the southwest and also enlarged the Changi airport area five
kilometers to the east. Those locations have not been included in
the 1973 agreement," he said.

Etty suggested the government unilaterally plot out its
territory on a map since Singapore always refused to negotiate
with Indonesia over the matter.

"We can mark out our territory with the U.N. so it will be
published on the U.N. website and then the whole world will know
that this territory is ours," she said.

Etty also suggested that the government report to the U.N. its
17,580 islands including their location and coordinates.

"But first of all, we should name all of the islands since
only 5,000 of them have already been named," she said.

Nasri Gustaman of the politics and regional studies division
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, said that currently
the country was holding negotiations with Vietnam and the
Philippines.

"We prefer not to use provocative measures to settle the
border problems because we still uphold the principle of
maintaining good relations with other countries," he said.