KL ready to talk further on Sipadan and Ligitan
JAKARTA (JP): Visiting Malaysian Foreign Minister Abdullah Badawi dodged questions yesterday on the likelihood of taking the disputed Sipadan and Ligitan Islands to international arbitration, stressing instead Kuala Lumpur's commitment to further talks.
"At this time, let's just follow what has been agreed and understood between the two leaders," he said on his arrival at Soekarno-Hatta airport yesterday afternoon.
Badawi is here to attend today's one-day ministerial meeting of the fourth Indonesia-Malaysia joint commission. He is scheduled to pay a courtesy call on President Soeharto this morning.
A joint working group meeting on the Sipadan and Ligitan islands in Jakarta last year ended in deadlock when Malaysia, to the surprise of Indonesia, argued that the issue should be taken to the International Court of Justice.
Indonesia rejected the Malaysian proposal, saying that if bilateral channels were exhausted the matter could be taken to the ASEAN High Council.
Indonesia and Malaysia are founding members of ASEAN, whose other members are Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand.
Both Indonesia and Malaysia have for a long time laid claim to the Sipadan and Ligitan Islands, located just off the east coast of Kalimantan. The two countries base their respective claims on maps they each inherited from their former colonial rulers, the British in Malaysia and the Dutch in Indonesia.
Despite the stalemate at the working group level, during a meeting between Soeharto and Mahathir last September, Malaysia seemed to acquiesce in the Indonesian position, agreeing to continue further bilateral talks on the overlapping claims.
"This demonstrates the goodwill between the two leaders and the mutual sincerity to solve this matter amicably," Badawi said yesterday.
The heads of state also agreed that further discussions would be undertaken by selected representatives.
Badawi yesterday refused to comment on exactly what level those representatives would be, saying that they would be made public after the selection was made.
Delegates to the joint commission meeting have stated that the Sipadan and Ligitan dispute would not be the highlight of the meeting but would only be among several bilateral issues to be discussed.
A group of senior officials began conversing on Tuesday to prepare for today's ministerial meeting.
According to Izhar Ibrahim, the director general of political affairs and head of the Indonesian delegation, there will not be a new exchange of documents at the commission meeting. He said the senior officials would simply review the reports of the working group.
He said that among the important issues to be discussed at the ministerial level meeting were the growth of economic cooperation zones, the flow of workers between the two countries and the influx of illegal Indonesian workers in Malaysia. (mds)