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| Image: Wiki Commons |
By Shannon Tiezzi
Don’t read too much into Luhut Panjaitan’s comment about bringing the South China Sea issue to an international court.
A top Indonesian official recently said his country was seeking clarification on the extent of Chinese claims to the South China Sea – and could take China to international court if that clarity isn’t forthcoming. Luhut Pandjaitan, the chief of staff to Indonesian President Joko Widodo as well as Jakarta’s coordinating minister for political, legal, and security affairs, made the comments on Wednesday.
According to Reuters, Panjaitan called China’s “nine-dash line,” which claims most of the South China Sea for Beijing, “a problem we are facing,” saying that “we don’t want to see any power projection in this area.” It’s not only a problem for Indonesia, either – the nine-dash line “also directly (impacts) the interests of Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and the Philippines,” Panjaitan added.
“We are working very hard on this. We are trying to approach the Chinese,” Panjaitan said. “We would like to see a solution on this in the near future through dialogue, or we could bring it to the International Criminal Court.”
As my colleague Prashanth Parameswaran has explained before, Indonesia walks a fine line when it comes to the South China Sea disputes. On one hand, Jakarta is not a claimant to any of the disputed features in the South China Sea, so it positions itself as a neutral party (and potential mediator). However, Indonesia is also concerned about depictions of China’s nine-dash line that would seem to indicate Beijing claims waters that are part of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (specifically, the EEZ generated by the Natuna Islands, located in the southwest corner of China’s nine-dash line). Jakarta has tried numerous times to get China to clarify its claims, but so far Beijing has stuck to purposeful ambiguity as to the extent and meaning of the nine-dash line.
Read the full story at The Diplomat