Thailand satisfied with ICJ's ruling on Preah

BANGKOK, November 11 (TNA) - Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul says that a ruling on Monday afternoon (Thailand's time) by The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a territorial case related to the ancient Preah Vihear Temple is satisfactory. Speaking briefly to journalists in The Hague after the ICJ’s ruling, Surapong acknowledged that Thailand and neighboring Cambodia need to later discuss their unsettled border issues at their joint border commissions' meetings. Meanwhile, Virachai Plasai, Thai Ambassador to The Hague, who heads Thailand’s legal team for the case, then briefed journalists of the ICJ’s judgement that the World Court maintained its authority to consider the case, as requested by Phnom Penh, and suggested both Thailand and Cambodia adhere to its 1962’s ruling regarding the surrounding area of the ancient Hindu temple. Virachai noted that the World Court rejected Cambodia’s claim of its ownership over the 4.6-square-kilometer land surrounding the Preah Vihear Temple and over an adjacent hill, called the Pheu Makheu. According to the top Thai envoy to The Hague, the ICJ’s judgement did not concern borderline between Thailand and Cambodia and did not use a 1:200,000 scale map, proposed by Cambodia, to identify the borderline between the two countries, but the World Court recommended both Thailand and Cambodia, as members of United Nations, to work together in keeping the Preah Vihear Temple as a world heritage site listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The World Court in 1962 awarded the Preah Vihear Temple to Cambodia but the ownership of an area in its vicinity has remained in dispute. Speaking in a live television and radio broadcast on Monday evening, after calling a special meeting with authorities concerns following the World Court's ruling, Thai Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra officially briefed the public on the ICJ's verdict and promised that her administration will take public and national interests, as well as peace along the common border and in the ASEAN Community (AC), in which Thailand and Cambodian, as well as other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were set to participate by 2015, into careful consideration when taking further actions following the World Court's ruling. Thai academics, however, cautioned that consequent nationalist sentiment might cause a trouble, partly triggered by a domestic political game, although the ICJ’s ruling does not concern the two countries' disputed land, urging the government to, therefore, provide proper information to the public that Thailand is, in fact, not losing any territory. (TNA)