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Dhaka: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has announced recently that the verdict on the Burma and Bangladesh maritime boundary dispute will be passed in early 2012.
The announcement was made by the president of ITLOS, Jose Luis Jesus, while speaking at the 21st meeting of the 162 state parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, held at the UN headquarters in New York on 13 June, 2011.
Both countries have accepted the tribunal's settlement for their dispute over delimitation of their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, and their proceedings were instituted before the tribunal on 14 December, 2009, as Case No. 16.
“The judgment in the case is expected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2012”, José Luís Jesus said.
He said the written phase of the proceedings in the case is running its course while the final pleading should be filed by 1 July this year; the oral proceedings are scheduled to take place in September this year.
Bangladesh lodged its claim for the sea boundary on 1 July 2010 and Burma lodged its counter-claim on 1 December 2010.
Bangladesh already filed its reply in March and Burma will have to file its rejoinder in July this year. Concerned with the extended continental shelf, Bangladesh also lodged its claim for ranges from 400-460 nautical miles in the sea bed of the Bay to the UN Division of Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea in New York on 25 February 2011.
Burma lodged its claim over extended continual shelf in December 2008.
Burma’s successive governments have never publicized their preparations for securing the country’s territorial sea. An official on condition of anonymity however told Narinjara that the government has recently done seismic surveys over its territorial sea up to the Saint Martin Island in southeastern Bangladesh, hiring Chinese and Korean experts for its counter-claim on the dispute.
The sea dispute between the two neighbors was at a tense stand-off in November 2008 when Burma, in partnership with a South Korean company, tried to explore hydrocarbon in the sea that is also claimed by Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh signed a deal with a US energy giant ConocoPhillips on 16 June 2011 to explore gas and oil in the two offshore blocks 10 and 11 that are on the center of disputed sea stretch with Burma and India.
It however said ConocoPhillips will carry out explorations only in the undisputed portions of the blocks.
Source:http://www.narinjara.com/details.asp?id=2994
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