May take 9 years to settle boundary row with India: Dhaka

DHAKA - Bangladesh’s foreign affairs ministry has projected a nine-year period to settle maritime boundary dispute with India and Myanmar and has sought funds till 2017-18, a media report said Sunday.

Seeking funds from the finance ministry, the foreign office projected nine years for the settlement of the disputed issues in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), New Age newspaper said.

ITLOS is an independent judicial body set up by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to adjudicate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the convention.

The projection and the fund requirement of Taka 800 million ($11.5 million) were submitted in a letter last week.

Bangladesh is sandwiched between India and Myanmar in the upper reaches of the Bay of Bengal that is estimated to have significant potential for hydrocarbon exploration.

During the talks in New Delhi Jan 11, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed on the need to “amicably demarcate the maritime boundary”, a joint communiqu issued after the visit said.

Additional secretary of the foreign ministry Khurshed Alam declined to comment on the projection.

Khurshed, chief of the country’s UNCLOS related issues, had earlier told the media it might take about five years to resolve the disputes, the newspaper said.

Officials said the first hearing in the issue was likely to be held in the ITLOS in June with both Bangladesh and India appointing legal consultants.

Bangladesh has nominated Alan Vaughan Lowe, a former professor of international law at the University of Oxford, to be a member of the five-member arbitration tribunal while India has proposed the name of P. Sreenivasa Rao, a former legal adviser to India’s external affairs ministry.

The ITLOS has nominated three judges to constitute an arbitration tribunal on the Bangladesh-India maritime boundary dispute. The judges are Rudiger Wolfrum of Germany, Tullio Treves of Italy and Ivan Anthony Shearer of Australia. Wolfrum will preside over the tribunal.

According to the UNCLOS, Bangladesh must demarcate its sea boundaries by July 27, 2011, India by June 29, 2009 and Myanmar May 21, 2009.