By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT was today (June 13) petitioned to declare null and void an allegedly invalid Thai-Cambodian bilateral deal on a shared maritime resources development scheme planned over the last couple of decades.
Former Palang Pracharath MP Paiboon Nititawan filed the petition for the Constitutional Court to consider declaring the MOU 2001 signed between Thailand and Cambodia null and void in order to maintain Thailand’s territorial sovereignty and maritime natural resources around Kood Island off Trat which shares a border with Cambodia.
The MOU 2001 pertaining to profit-sharing plans on maritime natural resources development between the neighbouring countries in a 26,000-square-kilometre radius around Kood Island in the Gulf of Thailand had been signed in the time of former prime minister/now de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra without prior approval from the Thai legislative branch, thus being deemed invalid in the first place, according to the former lawmaker.
Former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen had earlier held a tete-a-tete talk with Thaksin at the latter’s residence in Bangkok and it was said this involved the contentious Thai-Cambodian profit-sharing maritime resources projects based on the MOU 2001, among other issues.
In his petition, Paiboon holds the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Treaties and Legal Affairs directly accountable for the Thai-Cambodian MOU allegedly incurring disadvantages of the Thai side.
However, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa has yet remained non-committal to the sustained controversy over the bilateral natural resources development scheme designed around the island district of Trat with the alleged possibility of the Thai territorial sovereignty being partly lost to Cambodia.
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Kood Island. Photos: Thai Rath
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