RI wants solution to row over islands

RI wants solution to row over islands

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said Saturday Jakarta wants a political solution to a dispute over the two islands off Borneo rather than a reference to the world court as proposed by Malaysia.

Indonesia and Malaysia "are still in the process of finding out whether a political solution is possible," Alatas was quoted by Bernama news agency as saying.

The two sides have overlapping sovereignty claims on Sipadan and Ligitan, two small islands off the coast of Indonesia's East Kalimantan and Malaysia's eastern state of Sabah.

Years of negotiations between the two countries failed to yield an accord and the two parties last year agreed to try and settle it through talks between high level "personal envoys" of their leaders.

"Only when we know the result of their (envoys') work, will it then be put back to the two foreign ministers for further action," said Alatas, who was in Kuala Lumpur for the ASEAN- Mekong Basin Development Cooperation ministerial meeting scheduled to start Monday.

During talks between the two countries on the islands in Jakarta in September 1994, Kuala Lumpur wanted to raise the issue for arbitration with the The Hague-based International Court of Justice.

Indonesia, on the other hand, asked for a settlement mechanism organised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which both countries belong to.