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RI, Malaysia to avoid force in Ambalat row
Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to reopen diplomatic discussions to settle the dispute over the 15,000-square-kilometer Ambalat territory, located off the coast of East Kalimantan
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ndonesia and Malaysia have agreed to reopen diplomatic discussions to settle the dispute over the 15,000-square-kilometer Ambalat territory, located off the coast of East Kalimantan.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said Tuesday the two governments had agreed to reactivate a joint commission consisting of work groups in four fields, including politics, through which Ambalat had previously been deliberated.
“By reactivating the joint commission, all working groups will automatically resume,” he told The Jakarta Post.
He said there would be meetings held by each working group until November, involving related ministries and state institutions.
Deliberations of the Ambalat issue, he said, would involve the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the National Survey and Mapping Coordination Agency (Bakosurtanal), among others.
Defense Ministry spokesman I Wayan Midhio said that until an agreement was reached, the ministry would stick to borders “that we have set and acquired approval from the UN”, despite different claims by neighboring countries.
A security expert with the Defense and Maritime Study Forum, Alman Helvas Ali, said the Indonesian government should be aware that a political agreement might not be always live up to what they hoped.
“Let’s continue negotiations. But [the Indonesian government] must be stern and firm [against Malaysia] on the issue,” he told the Post.
“[The Indonesian government] should maintain the presence of its submarines [in the territory], for example. Don’t just make claims and then fail to manage and control [Ambalat],” he said.
Alman also said the Indonesian government should guarantee the livelihood of its clients operating there, such as Italy-based oil and gas company Eni, by immediately building a Navy base in Sulawesi as a safeguard.
He said the Malaysian government was developing power in its eastern part and had built a Navy submarine base in Sepanggar Bay on Borneo Island.
“Malaysia could land a strategic blow on Indonesia with just one submarine [from the Malaysian Navy base in Sepanggar Bay] if we fail to solve the Ambalat issue on the diplomatic table,” he said.
Both Indonesia and Malaysia have laid claim to the area, believed to consist of two blocks of potentially huge oil and gas reserves.
According to Geologist Andang Bachtiar, just one of the Ambalat blocks could hold as much as 764 million barrels of oil and 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas.
