GUY BAKER
BANGKOK
Opinion sent to The Nation
Please let me say that I once lived for about two years less than 10 kilometres from the Preah Vihear Temple, I visited it a number of times when it was open from the Thai side and I was surprised then, as I am now, that it does not legally belong to Thailand as it is almost inaccessible from Cambodia and it does "jut out" from Thailand like a Thai peninsula. All of that, however, is irrelevant.
Songdej Praditsmanont quoted the 1962 court decision in part: "The natural inference was that she [Thailand] had accepted the frontier at Preah Vihear as it was drawn on the map, irrespective of its correspondence with the watershed line" (Court never decided on disputed land, 11 Aug). That was the court's decision that Thailand had accepted the map and the border line on that map. Period. The word "irrespective" in the decision is, in this case, equivalent to "irrelevant," ie, the watershed issue was irrelevant in 1962 as it is irrelevant today. Songdej asserted that "the ambiguity regarding the surrounding territory was not judged, and that remains the case", but it was indeed judged when the court decided that Thailand, by 1962, had accepted the map and the border line on that map.
The "ambiguity" that exists is that which exists only in the minds of some Thais, and that is why the court decision was never challenged by Thailand, as there is no ambiguity and no case to be presented. This is a closed case except in the minds of some of those with closed minds and after a lapse of 48 years, without any new evidence to present, it could probably only be heard in a fantasy court.
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