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.