Thailand Says Cambodia Trying to Deceive UN Court [The ICJ awarded Preah Vihear temple and its "vicinity" to Cambodia, so who is deceiving the UN court, Thailand or Cambodia?]

By Zsombor Peter 

The Cambodia Daily

April 18, 2013

Thailand on Wednesday accused Cambodia of attempting to trick the U.N.’s top court into ruling in its favor on the ownership of a tract of hotly contested border territory next to the Preah Vihear temple, an area over which the two neighbors have waged a series of deadly battles in recent years.

The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing oral arguments from both countries in Cambodia’s request that the court interpret a 1962 decision that awarded Cambodia the Preah Vihear temple, but which Thailand says left ownership of the now-disputed land in doubt.

The temple and its surrounds have become a potent symbol of national pride for both countries and a useful football in domestic politics.

In opening Thailand’s case before the ICJ on Wednesday morning, Thai ambassador to The Hague Virachai Plasai insisted that his country had “always believed in living in peace and prosperity with our neighbors.”

The recent spate of deadly clashes, “all of which, all of which, have been provoked by Cambodia,” Mr. Virachai told the court, only followed Cambodia’s decision to list the border hugging temple as a Unesco world heritage site in 2008.

In its own opening arguments on Monday, Cambodia pointed out that the ICJ awarded it the temple in 1962 with the help of a colonial-era French map that placed the temple clearly inside Cambodian territory.

By never objecting to the veracity of that map, the court reasoned at the time, Thailand had tacitly accepted its boundaries. And, Cambodia’s lawyers argued on Monday, because that same French-era map puts the 4.6 square km of contested land inside Cambodia’s borders, the ICJ in 1962 effectively awarded it both the temple and the adjacent land.

On Wednesday, Mr. Virachai said the original 1962 decision did no such thing, arguing that the ICJ ruled strictly on who owned Preah Vihear temple. By claiming now that the court in 1962 had also decided the fate of the disputed land, Mr. Virachai said, Cambodia had “locked itself up in a parallel universe, a world cut with reality.”

Cambodia also argued on Monday that the ICJ could only have decided whose territory the temple sat on by also having a clear idea of where the boundaries of that territory ran—with the help of the French map.

But because there was never any discussion of the 4.6 square km in 1962, let alone a decision on who owned it, Mr. Virachai argued, there could be no discussion now.

What Cambodia was asking for now was not an interpretation of the 1962 decision but a full-blown appeal, which should be grounds for dismissing the case altogether, he said.

Mr. Virachai also accused Cambodia of willfully mistranslating Thai documents and falsifying maps to make its case.

Donald McRae, counsel for Thailand, picked up the argument, claiming that Cambodia was asking for nothing short of a demarcation of the local border, something the ICJ in 1962 had explicitly refused to do.

“But it is put covertly, obscurely…not as an explicit request,” Mr. McRae said. “No one can seriously claim that all Cambodia wants is an interpretation of the 1962 judgment.”

Taking a page out of the songbook of American rapper Em­inem, he added, “the question has to be asked, will the real question for interpretation please stand up?”

Mr. McRae noted that the original case was triggered by the presence of Thai troops in­side the temple itself, so the ICJ’s decision in 1962 that those soldiers leave the “vicinity” of the ruins had too narrow a meaning to include the whole 4.6 square km.

As he pointed out, the court in its original ruling said it was using the maps only to settle one question: who owned the temple.

“It was not a dispute in origin or in substance of where the boundary lay,” he said.

The Thai legal team also attacked the prominence Cambodia has sought to give the French map, noting that the ICJ in the original case had looked at many maps, with many versions of the border.

Despite the pride of place the ICJ’s 1962 judgment gives the French map, Thai counsel Alina Miron said that “nothing allows one to conclude that that map… was the only one that the court relied on in the original case.”

Thai counsel James Crawford said the boundary line on the map was anyway too vague—more akin to a “drunken grenadier”—to be used to mark the border on the ground, so could not settle the current dispute.

“Boundaries exist in the real world, not in some imaginary world,” he said, and “whereof the map does not speak, thereof the map must remain silent.”

Besides the map, the ICJ in 1962 also made much of a visit paid to Preah Vihear temple by Thai Prince Damrong Rajanubhab in 1930. The court reasoned that the prince’s failure to raise any objections to the French map with French officers during the trip was the best proof of all that Thailand had no trouble with it.

Thai counsel Alain Pellet countered that Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s own visit to the temple in 1963, during which he raised no objections to a new Thai fence running close to the temple, likewise proved that Cambodia accepted Thailand’s interpretation of where the fence lay.

“Mr. President,” he said, “you cannot have double standards.”

Mr. Crawford went on to ar­gue that Prince Damrong’s visit in 1930 conceded only to Cambodia’s claim to the temple, not to France’s map.

In any case, Mr. Crawford said, the prince was not visiting in any official capacity as a member of the Thai royal family, but as an avid and accomplished archeologist.

At the end of the day, the judges asked both sides to furnish the court with precise coordinates of what they believed the “vicinity” of the temple to be.

Cambodia will make its final oral argument to the ICJ today, and Thailand on Friday.