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Thailand has appointed conciliators from South Africa and Germany for a U.N. arbitration process launched by Cambodia to help resolve a long-running maritime boundary dispute, Thailand’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
German jurist Rüdiger Wolfrum and South African maritime law expert Albert Hoffmann will serve as conciliators, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told reporters.
Cambodian government spokesperson Pen Bona, referring to comments by Prime Minister Hun Manet at a recent regional forum, said Cambodia welcomed Thailand’s participation in the process as a step toward a peaceful resolution.
Cambodia earlier this month initiated compulsory conciliation proceedings under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) after Thailand unilaterally withdrew from a decades-old agreement that provided a framework for negotiating overlapping claims in the Gulf of Thailand and for joint hydrocarbon exploration.
Phnom Penh has appointed Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn as its agent in the proceedings, along with Danish diplomat Peter Taksøe-Jensen and French academic Jean-Marc Thouvenin as conciliators.
The conciliators must meet within 30 days to select a chairperson before proceedings begin. The mechanism allows a panel of independent experts to examine the dispute and issue recommendations, although their findings are not legally binding.
The Thai embassy in Phnom Penh and Thailand’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The dispute centers on about 26,000 square km (10,000 square miles) of sea in the Gulf of Thailand, known as the Overlapping Claims Area. The zone is estimated to hold nearly 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and significant oil reserves valued at about $300 billion.
Cambodia on Tuesday also renewed calls for joint land border surveys with Thailand, a process Bangkok has previously postponed.
Ties between the neighbors remain strained after two rounds of deadly border clashes last year that killed more than 100 people and displaced nearly a million. A ceasefire reached in December has largely held.
