Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

The minister for foreign affairs, Dipu Mani, revealed in a press conference the government’s decision to go for arbitration to settle our dispute with both India and Myanmar in regard to the delimitation of our maritime boundary. It would be interesting for the general readers to know as to how international law in this regard has evolved and why and how this problem has arisen. In the course of the discussion naturally the issue involved will be brought to the fore.
   First, the evolution of the law of the sea. Several conferences on the law of the sea were held to formulate and define the rights and obligations of each littoral state. The first conference was held in Geneva in 1958 with the participation of 86 member states. This conference adopted four conventions in regard to the territorial sea, the high seas, the continental shelf and fishing and conservation of living resources. The second conference met in 1960 but ended up in disagreements on some vital issues. This was followed by three other conferences successively held in 1967, 1968 and in 1970. Having held very important deliberations the one in 1970 agreed to declare the sea-bed and ocean floor and the sub-soil thereof as the common heritage of mankind beyond the national jurisdiction of any one country. It was also decided to hold another conference to formulate laws governing the peaceful uses of the seas. The next conference met in ten long sessions between 1973 and 1981 either in Geneva or in New York. On the conclusion of the last session, the text of the draft convention (UNCLOS III) was issued though the final decision-making session was held in 1982. On December 10, 1982 the draft was opened for signature at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Bangladesh was among the 119 countries that became a signatory on the same day.
   As is evident from the above, the UNCLOS III document is the product of work of specialists spread over a long time. This is so for the simple reason that the shape and location of each country in relation to the adjacent one is different. Therefore the peculiarity of each had necessarily to be taken into consideration. Summarily speaking the document sets out the principles for delimitation of maritime boundary of all countries each one of which may have a coastline with its own peculiarity. In any case, UNCLOS-III defines the maritime zones in the following manner. From a well-defined line called the baseline each country may claim an area stretching up to 12 nautical miles known as the territorial sea. Adjacent to the territorial sea and up to a limit of 24 nautical miles is a country’s contiguous zone, beyond which is the EEZ stretching up to 200 nautical miles.
   The continental shelf of a coastal state comprising the seabed and the subsoil thereof may under certain circumstances stretch up to 350 nautical miles. The UNCLOS document has precisely explained as to how these boundaries have to be fixed and the rights and obligations of each coastal state within each zone so defined.
   How have we acted in this respect so far and why has the conflict arisen with the neighbouring country in this regard? As early as in 1974, the baseline from where the boundaries of each maritime zone have to be drawn was defined by an act of parliament in terms of geographical co-ordinates. However, India has not agreed to the western reference point of the baseline and Myanmar has also disputed the eastern one. From 1974 to 1982 several meetings were held between India and Bangladesh but without any positive result. With India, we have yet another unsettled maritime issue, namely, the one in respect of the Talpatti island (also known as Purbasha or New Moore island). At one point of time during the negotiations, the two countries agreed to a joint survey to determine the mid-channel of the Hariabhanga river to finally settle as to which country the sand bar should belong. This has never taken place, reportedly due to the dilly-dally tactics of our big neighbour. While we have not been able to put our claim to the vast maritime area on our south, now we seem to be within the jaws of a vice. Let us explain. India has settled its maritime boundary with each one of its neighbouring countries sharing the sea, not only surrounding the Bay of Bengal but beyond, with Indonesia in 1974 and 1977, with Myanmar in 1987 the tri-junction of India, Thailand and Indonesia in 1978 and Sri Lanka, with some concession in 1974 and 1976.
   The situation has now come to a point where some of our diplomats earlier involved in negotiations on the issue with other countries feel that not only may we be denied our right to the sea to the south but we may even be reduced to a sea-locked state. Moreover, experts on oil exploration of the deep sea are of the opinion that the claims by both India and Myanmar of the sea fall within the limits of our boundary. Meanwhile we came to know, much to our horror, at a very sensitive time in our national life just days before the last parliamentary elections, of military manoeuvres in our Bay by both India and Myanmar. Do all these mean pre-figuration of more similar things to come?
   What course is open to us now? It was rightly envisaged by those who drafted the UNCLOS documents that there would be disputes between states in regard to the interpretation and application of the law. More so, in our case. Because the Bangladesh coastline is an indented one and that both the Indian and Myanmar coastlines are perpendicular to ours. Naturally, delimitation by applying the normal principle of equidistance is out of the question. In any case, settlement of disputes constitutes an important part of UNCLOS. While we have wasted too much time in realising the importance of the issue we may not procrastinate any further. At the same time, however, one should understand that the matter is a complex one, albeit, the part on settlement of disputes in UNCLOS is quite comprehensive and an elaborate one leaving no room for misinterpretation. More so, because, the panel of arbitrators from where a state party will choose its arbitrators consists of people selected by various organs of the UN like the FAO, UNEP, IOC and the IMO. The arbitrators to be nominated by parties to the dispute must be known for their experience in maritime matters, enjoying at the same time highest reputation for fairness, competence and integrity. The flipside of the whole thing is that the decision of the tribunal shall be final (art. 11, Annex II: Arbitration) unless the parties to the dispute earlier agreed otherwise. This enjoins on us extreme caution to prepare our case flawlessly. We can’t really have the luxury of making any faux pas. People who have some interest in the problem know that we need to undertake surveys to put forward our claim of the continental shelf beyond the 200 we mark, measure the thickness of the sediment all over the EEZ up to the 200 we and clearly formulate our claim to the extended shelf. The point we are trying to make is that the matter cannot be handled by a charlatan, but really needs someone with impeccable record of experience and expertise in dealing with it. The ministry of foreign affairs will do well to appoint a real expert known to have a thorough knowledge of the UNCLOS and its application, an expert who can work out the different phases of the task to be undertaken and advise the government as to what should be done to begin with and what would be the sequence of tasks to be undertaken. With whatever little knowledge we have of the problem, we are at a loss to understand as to why we have asked for ‘arbitration’. Have we exhausted the very preliminary option of settling disputes by ‘peaceful means’? Do we have all the data and information in hand to argue our case skilfully and exhaustively?
   Let us hope the foreign ministry is well prepared to face the situation competently.
   The writer is a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University. He can be reached at

While the tone of the Obama administration is different from that of its predecessor, and some of its foreign policies diverge from those of George W Bush, at their core both administrations subscribe to the same doctrine: Whatever the White House perceives as a threat — whether it be Iran, North Korea, or the proliferation of long-range missiles — must be viewed as such by Moscow and Beijing.
   In addition, by the evidence available, Barack Obama has not drawn the right conclusion from his predecessor’s failed Iran policy. A paradigm of sticks-and-carrots simply is not going to work in the case of the Islamic Republic. Here, a lesson is readily available, if only the Obama White House were willing to consider Iran’s recent history. It is unrealistic to expect that a regime which fought Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (then backed by the United States) to a standstill in a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s, unaided by any foreign power, and has for 30 years withstood the consequences of US-imposed economic sanctions will be alarmed by Washington’s fresh threats of ‘crippling sanctions.’
   Most important, the Obama administration is ignoring the altered international order that has emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis triggered by Wall Street’s excesses. While its stimulus package, funded by taxpayers and foreign borrowing, has arrested the decline in the nation’s gross domestic product, Washington has done little to pull the world
   economy out of the doldrums. That task — performed by the US in recent recessions — has fallen willy-nilly
   to China. History repeatedly shows that such economic clout sooner or later translates into diplomatic power.
   Backed by more than $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, the state-owned Chinese oil corporations have been locking up hydrocarbon resources as far away as Brazil. Not surprisingly, Iran, with the second largest oil as well as gas reserves in the world, looms large in the strategic plans of Beijing. The Chinese want to import Iran’s petroleum and natural gas through pipelines across Central Asia, thus circumventing sea routes vulnerable to US naval interdiction. As this is an integral part of China’s energy security policy, little wonder that Chinese oil companies have committed an estimated $120 billion dollars — so far — to Iran’s energy industry.
   During a recent meeting with Iran’s first vice president, Muhammad Reza Rahimi, in Beijing, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao stressed the importance of cooperation between the two countries when it comes to hydrocarbons and trade (at $29 billion a year, and rising), as well as ‘greater coordination in international affairs.’ Little wonder, then, that China has already moved to neutralise any sanctions that the United States — backed by Britain, France and Germany — might impose on Iran without United Nation’s authorisation.
   Foremost among these would be a ban on the export of gasoline to Iran, whose oil refining capacity falls significantly short of domestic demand. Chinese oil corporations have already started shipping gasoline to Iran to fill the gap caused by a stoppage of supplies from British and Indian companies anticipating Washington’s possible move. Between June and August 2009, China signed $8 billion worth of contracts with Iran to help expand two existing Iranian oil refineries to produce more gasoline domestically and to help develop the gigantic South Pars natural gas field. Iran’s national oil corporation has also invited its Chinese counterparts to participate in a $42.8 billion project to construct seven oil refineries and a 1,000 mile trans-Iran pipeline that will facilitate pumping petroleum to China.
   
   Tehran and Moscow
   When it comes to Russia, Tehran and Moscow have a long history of close relations, going back to Tsarist times. During that period and the subsequent Soviet era, the two states shared the inland Caspian Sea. Now, as two of the five littoral states of the Caspian, Iran and Russia still share a common fluvial border.
   Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between the Islamic Republic and Russia warmed. Defying pressures from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company continued building a civilian nuclear power plant near the Iranian port city of Bushehr. It is scheduled to begin generating electricity next year.
   As for nuclear threats, the Kremlin’s perspective varies from Washington’s. It is far more concerned with the actual threat posed by some of Pakistan’s estimated 75 nuclear weapons falling into militant Islamist hands than with the theoretical one from Tehran. Significantly, it was during his recent trip to Beijing to conclude ambitious hydrocarbon agreements with China that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, ‘If we speak about some kind of sanctions [on Iran] now, before we take concrete steps, we will fail to create favourable conditions for negotiations. That is why we consider such talk premature.’
   The negotiations that Putin mentioned are now ongoing between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the US, Britain, China, France, and Russia) as well as Germany. According to Western sources, the agenda of the talks is initially to centre on a ‘freeze for freeze’ agreement. Iran would suspend its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for the UN Security Council not strengthening its present nominal economic sanctions. If these reports are accurate, then the chances of a major breakthrough may be slim indeed.
   At the heart of this issue lies Iran’s potential ability to enrich uranium to a level usable as fuel for a nuclear weapon. This, in turn, is linked to the way Iran’s leaders view national security. As a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is, in fact, entitled to enrich uranium. The key point is the degree of enrichment: 5 per cent enriched uranium for use as fuel in an electricity generating plant (called low enriched uranium, LEU); 20 per cent enriched for use as feedstock for producing medical isotopes (categorised as medium enriched uranium, MEU); and 90 per cent-plus for bomb-grade fuel (known as high enriched uranium, HEU).
   So far, what Iran has produced at its Natanz nuclear plant is LEU. At the Iran-Six Powers meeting in Geneva on October 1st, Iran agreed in principle to send three-quarters of its present stock of 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) of LEU to Russia to be enriched into MEU and shipped back to its existing Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes. If this agreement is fleshed out and finalised by all the parties under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency, then the proportion of Iran’s LEU with a potential of being turned into HEU would diminish dramatically.
   When it comes to the nuclear conundrum, what distinguishes China and Russia from the US is that they have conferred unconditional diplomatic recognition and acceptance on the Islamic Republic of Iran. So their commercial and diplomatic links with Tehran are thriving. Indeed, a sub-structure of pipelines and economic alliances between hydrocarbon-rich Russia, Iran, and energy-hungry China is now being forged. In other words, the foundation is being laid for the emergence of a Russia-Iran-China diplomatic triad in the not-too-distant future, while Washington remains stuck in an old groove of imposing ‘punishing’ sanctions against Tehran for its nuclear program.
   
   Tehran and Washington
   There is, of course, a deep and painful legacy of animosity and ill-feeling between the 30-year-old Islamic Republic of Iran and the US. Iran was an early victim of Washington’s subversive activities when the six-year-old CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq in 1953. That scar on Iran’s body politic has not healed yet. Half a century later, the Iranians watched the Bush administration invade neighbouring Iraq and overthrow its president, Saddam Hussein, on trumped-up
   charges involving his supposed program to produce weapons of mass destruction.
   Iran’s leaders know that during his second term in office — as Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker — Bush authorised a clandestine CIA program with a budget of $400 million to destabilise the Iranian regime. They are also aware that the CIA has focused on stoking disaffection among Sunni ethnic minorities in Shiite-ruled Iran. These include ethnic Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzistan adjoining Iraq, and ethnic Baluchis in Sistan-Baluchistan Province abutting the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
   Little wonder that Tehran pointed an accusing finger at the US for the recent assassination of six commanders of its Revolutionary Guard Corps in Sistan-Baluchistan by two suicide bombers belonging to Jundallah (the Army of Allah), an extremist Sunni organisation. As yet, there is no sign, overt or covert, that President Obama has cancelled or repudiated his predecessor’s program to destabilise the Iranian regime.
   Insecure regimes seek security in nuclear arms. History shows that joining the nuclear club has, in fact, proven an effective strategy for survival. Israel and North Korea provide striking examples of this.
   Unsure of Western military assistance in a conventional war with Arab nations, and of its ability to maintain its traditional armed superiority over its Arab adversaries, Israel’s leaders embarked on a nuclear weapons program in the mid-1950s. They succeeded in their project a decade later. Since then Israel has acquired an arsenal of 80 to 200 nuclear weapons.
   In the North Korean case, once the country had tested its first atomic bomb in October 2006, the Bush administration softened its stance towards it. In the bargaining that followed, North Korea got its name removed from the State Department’s list of nations that support international terrorism. In the on-again-off-again bilateral negotiations that followed, the Pyongyang regime as an official nuclear state has been seeking a guarantee against attack or subversion by the United States.
   Without saying so publicly, Iran’s leaders want a similar guarantee from the US. Conversely, unless Washington ends its clandestine program to destabilise the Iranian state, and caps it with an offer of diplomatic acceptance and normal relations, there is no prospect of Tehran abandoning its right to enrich uranium. On the other hand, the continuation of a policy of destabilisation, coupled with ongoing threats of ‘crippling’ sanctions and military strikes (whether by the Pentagon or Israel), can only drive the Iranians toward a nuclear breakout capability.
   During George W. Bush’s eight-year presidency, the US position in the world underwent a sea change. From the Clinton administration, Bush had inherited a legacy of 92 months of continuous economic prosperity, a budget in surplus, and the transformation of the UN Security Council into a handmaiden of the State Department. What he passed on to Barack Obama was the Great Recession in a world where America’s popularity had hit rock bottom and its economic strength was visibly ebbing. All this paved the way for the economic and political rise of China, as well as the strengthening of Russia as an energy giant capable of extending its influence in Europe and challenging American dominance in the Middle East.
   In this new environment expecting the leaders of Iran, backed by China and Russia, to do the bidding of Washington means placing a bet on the inconceivable.
   Source: TomDispatch; Dilip Hiro is the author of Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources (Nation Books), among other works. His forthcoming book, After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World, will be published in January 2010, also by Nation Books.

Save its image before it
vanishes away like bubble

The state run Bangladesh Television’s (BTV) impartiality is under threat. It has been manipulated by ruling parties again and again. Day by day it loses its audience and credence.
   Parliamentary standing committee mentioned the naked truth but the question is how long we need to wait to have a credible BTV. People have no cable access in remote areas. Thus they are bound to depend on BTV for news updates. But BTV always sings the song of ruling parties.
   The programme quality is not praiseworthy at all. It hardly maintains time schedule. Presentation style is obsolete. Every political party promises to make BTV a modern channel providing news, entertainment and education. But it remains a nightmarish experience watching BTV.
   Monzur Shohag
   Via e-mail

---