By Thai Newsroom Reporters
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER Maris Sangiampongsa confirmed today (Nov. 20) a group of persons will be named “as soon as possible” to sit on a Joint Technical Committee for a profit-sharing, undersea resources development project between Thailand and Cambodia.
Maris stopped short of elaborating on the shortly-anticipated naming of members on the Thai side of the Joint Technical Committee supposedly to take steps toward the yet-contentious, bilateral development scheme for the two neighbouring countries to jointly explore and produce oil, natural gas and other undersea natural resources in the Gulf of Thailand around Koh Kood island off the eastern seaboard province of Trat.
Nevertheless, the Thai side of the committee has been earlier expected to be set up no later than the end of this month.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has earlier said the undersea natural resources development project will be implemented by Thailand and Cambodia as originally planned in the time of her father/former prime minister/now de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra and his former Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen over a couple of last decades.
But a sustained bone of contention has been raised by government critics over the legitimacy of a relevant MoU made in 2001 between Bangkok and Phnom Penh which could possibly render disadvantages to the Thai side in regard to overlapping claims of territorial integrity over maritime areas in vicinity of Thailand’s Koh Kood island where, they said, the Cambodians might possibly unilaterally occupy and take a huge profit without sharing it with the Thais.
They have insisted that the joint undersea resources development project not be implemented until Phnom Penh has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 and accordingly amended terms and conditions of the questionable MoU governing a 26,000-sq.km. maritime area under overlapping claims by both countries.
CAPTION:
Foreign Affairs Minister Maris Sangiampongsa. Top photo: Thai Rath, Front Page photo: MNG Online
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