KL wants island for 'maritime stability'

Malaysia says it has no problems with S'pore operating Horsburgh Lighthouse, but took issue with its 'military presence' on Pedra Branca

The Straits Times, November 17, 2007
By Lydia Lim, Senior Political Correspondent

THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS) - MALAYSIA yesterday summed up its oral arguments by urging an international court to award it sovereignty over Pedra Branca as the way to maintain maritime stability in the region.
Its lawyer Professor James Crawford defined the case as being about 'the maintenance of the carefully calibrated situation' in the Singapore Strait.

That has been the thrust of Malaysia's case since Day One of its oral pleadings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In his opening speech before the court last Tuesday, Malaysia's first speaker Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Mohamad charged that Singapore's claim to the disputed island was an attempt to 'subvert' the status quo.

The status quo, as defined by Kuala Lumpur, is that Malaysia has sovereignty over Pedra Branca and Singapore owns and operates Horsburgh lighthouse there with its consent.

Both Prof Crawford and Tan Sri Abdul Kadir, who is the foreign affairs adviser to Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, stressed that Malaysia had no problem with Singapore continuing to operate Horsburgh lighthouse.

What it took issue with was what Tan Sri Abdul Kadir called Singapore's 'military presence on one of Johor's islands'.

He was referring to Singapore's placing of military communications equipment on Pedra Branca, which Singapore had cited as one of the ways in which it had displayed its sovereignty over the disputed island.

Singapore and Malaysia are appearing before the ICJ to resolve their dispute over the sovereignty of Pedra Branca, an island 40km east of Singapore which stands at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Strait.

Malaysia's stand is that the Johor Sultanate had a title to Pedra Branca - which it calls Pulau Batu Puteh - from time immemorial.

It claims that the Johor rulers gave permission to Britain to build and operate a lighthouse there, and that Singapore continued to do so after it gained independence.

Singapore has disputed this claim.

It argues that Pedra Branca was terra nullius, that is it belonged to no one, when the British took lawful possession of it in 1847 and built the Horsburgh Lighthouse there.

In the 160 years since, Britain and then Singapore confirmed and maintained their title through a series of actions that were an open, continuous and effective display of state authority, it told the court last week.

It also pointed out that Malaysia had kept silent throughout and never once protested Singapore's exercise of sovereignty.

Yesterday, Prof Crawford sought to depict Singapore as the guest state and Malaysia as the host state in the dispute.

The host state is the one with sovereignty over the territory, while the guest state is the one allowed to carry out certain activities there, he said.

He argued that Pedra Branca was like Hong Kong, where China was the host state and Great Britain the guest state which had leased the territories for a hundred years.

He had this to say about Singapore's activities on Pedra Branca: 'Assume that the guest state uses the facility to intercept governmental communications of the host state...that may be an infringement of the terms of the original consent, but whether or not that is so, it does not even begin to give the guest state any claim to title.'

In that way, Professor Crawford sought to strike out the many examples Singapore highlighted to the court relating to its exercise and display of sovereignty over Pedra Branca in the last 160 years.

Malaysia's other international counsel, Prof Marcelo Kohen, attempted to do the same.

He told the court that the case was not about the two states' competing activities on the island, but whose claim to original title was stronger.

Malaysia's lawyers yesterday also took the court through dozens of maps to show that the first time Singapore published a map showing Pedra Branca as part of its territory was in 1995, long after the territorial dispute with Malaysia arose.

Singapore's counter is that Malaysia published six maps between 1962 and 1975 showing Pedra Branca as belonging to Singapore.

The hearing continues next week with Singapore set to rebut Malaysia's oral pleadings on Monday and Tuesday.