Phnom Penh wants Indonesia to host JBC meet

April 6, 2011
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation

Cambodia insists it will attend the meeting of the Joint Boundary Commission (JBC) late this week only on the condition that it is hosted by Asean chair Indonesia, not by Thailand.

Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong wrote to remind his Thai counterpart Kasit Piromya on Monday that the JBC meeting was proposed by Indonesia and is being held in that country, in the city of Bogor.

Who would host the JBC meeting became an issue when Kasit wrote to Hor Namhong last Friday that Thailand as the host of the fifth Thailand-Cambodia JBC meeting was ready to convene the meeting on April 7-8 in Bogor.

The JBC is a bilateral mechanism to handle demarcation of the land boundary between Thailand and Cambodia. The two countries have taken turns hosting the meeting from time to time since its establishment in 2000.

The previous meeting was held in Phnom Penh in April 2009, and Thailand was supposed to host the next meeting in this country.

Indonesia, as the chair of Asean, became involved in the matter after a border skirmish in February. Phnom Penh asked the United Nations Security Council to call an urgent meeting to establish a permanent ceasefire at the border. The UN then asked Asean to implement a peace plan and urged the two conflicting countries to exercise existing bilateral mechanisms to settle the border dispute.

To implement the plan, Jakarta proposed sending Indonesian observers to assess the situation at the disputed areas adjacent to the Hindu temple of Preah Vihear as well as calling a meeting of joint mechanisms on border affairs.

Thailand took a firm stance that the border dispute with Cambodia should be settled bilaterally, while Phnom Penh wanted a third party to help resolve the issue.

Hor Namhong wrote to Kasit that as both countries had received an invitation and proposal from Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa for meetings of the JBC, the military-run General Border Commission (GBC) and the foreign ministers of Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia in Bogor, Cambodia would accept no other arrangement.

"Therefore, I would like to make it clear that up to now, Cambodia has never concurred to any meeting other than those proposed and hosted by Indonesia," he said in a letter to Kasit, of which a copy was seen by The Nation yesterday.

The Thai Foreign Ministry reiterated that the JBC meeting must be a purely bilateral one between Thailand and Cambodia. Indonesia provided only the venue for the two to discuss the boundary issue. No representative of another party would be at the meeting, an official the ministry said.

Only the JBC will meet in Bogor, since the Thai military has insisted that it will not attend the GBC meeting if it is held in Indonesia.

Supreme Commander Songkitti Jaggabatara said it was a tradition that Thailand and Cambodia would take turns to host the GBC meeting annually.

It was Phnom Penh's turn to host the eighth GBC in Cambodia and Thailand saw no point to have the meeting in Indonesia, he said.

"It is a bilateral obligation in accordance with the 1995 agreement to have the next meeting in Cambodia, so we will meet only in Cambodia," he said.