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International Court of Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2009
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In the border-zone between Cambodia and Thailand are located the ruins of an old temple Preah Vihear, over the precincts of which Cambodia claimed territorial sovereignty. Thailand on her side affirmed that the area in question lies on the Thai side of the frontier and on that ground considered herself entitled to station detachments of her armed forces there, as she has in fact done since 1954. With the aim of achieving the recognition of her territorial sovereignty in an international title and the withdrawal of the Thai detachments, Cambodia, on October 6, 1959, seised the International Court of Justice by a unilateral Application. In answer to Cambodia's Memorial which followed that Application, Thailand filed two preliminary objections to the jurisdiction of the Court. Since the proceedings on the merits of the case were eo ipso suspended under the provision of Article 62, paragraph 3, of the Rules of Court, there was a first hearing of the case, confined to those preliminary objections, from 10 to 15 April 1961, followed by a Judgment of the Court dated May 26, 1961*), by which Thailand's preliminary defence was unanimously rejected. After a further exchange of pleadings, this time on the merits of the case, and new hearings, from March 1st to 31st 1962, the Court recently rendered its final Judgment on 15 June 1962**).
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References
page 231 note 1. An analysis of this Judgment was given by the present writer in this Tijdschrift vol. VII (1960), p. 1 ff.Google Scholar
page 234 note 2. Judge Zafrulla Khan was of the opinion that Article 36 (5) was not, by its language, limited in its application to the original signatories of the Charter and the Statute, but equally applied to any State which might have been admitted to the United Nations prior to the dissolution of the Permanent Court on April i8th, 1946. — Judge Armand-Ugón felt that Article 36 (5) could not, by its wording, apply to declarations of acceptance made without a definite time limit. — Judge Badawi agreed with the latter construction and added a few supplementary arguments, inter alia, that the provision could not be held to apply to ex-enemy States.
page 235 note 3. Apart from the five who were elected at the periodic renewal of the Court every three years, Judges Alfaro and Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice who had already earlier been elected to fill the vacancies left by the demise of Judges Guerrero and Lauterpacht.
page 235 note 4. The seventh, the new American Judge Jessup, was prevented from sitting on the Bench on the ground of Article 17 of the Statute.
page 236 note 1. Martens, , N.R.G.2, XXXII, 130.Google Scholar
page 237 note 2. Under a subsequent treaty of 23 March 1907 a second Mixed Commission was set up, which has equally played a certain part in the frontier delimitation. See below in the text and notes 9) and 19).
page 237 note 3. Comp. on this uncertainty the dissenting opinion of Judge Wellington Koo, p. 98–100. Side-by-side with the two main lines, presented by the International Training Centre for Aerial Survey of Delft (The Netherlands) — placing the major part of the temple ground on the Thai side —, respectively by a private bureau of “specialists in photogeology and photo-interpretation” of Denver (Colorado)—placing the main portion of the temple on the Cambodian side—, there had emerged during the examination and cross-examination of the witnesses and the experts the possibility of two other alternative lines. The controversy on the crucial precise line is very interesting because it revealed two novel problems of international law which had never, to my knowledge, arisen before, namely, a. to what extent may the topography of stream channels in an area vary between the dry and wet seasons of a normal year, and b. can the location of a watershed change in the course of time by natural phenomena such as an earthquake, faulting of rock-beds, landslide or rock-fall, etc. (a problem very well known for a long time from the law concerning the thalweg of rivers)?
page 237 note 4. Witnesses or experts are very seldom called in and interrogated by the parties or by the Court either at their request or on its own initiative. The latter occurred in the Corfu Channel case (Merits) between the United Kingdom and Albania in 1948/1949 (I.C.J., Reports 1949, p. 4 ff.).Google Scholar
page 237 note 5. The Court has not taken sides on the question as to where exactly the line of the watershed runs because it did not consider that question decisive.
page 238 note 6. This treaty could not be found in Martens, N.R.G.3.
page 238 note 7. Martens, N.R.G.3, XVIII, 4.Google Scholar
page 238 note 8. During the Japanese onslaught on South-East Asia in the second World war the Vichy Government of France consented under enemy pressure to a retrocession of Cambodian territory to Siam. This was, of course, revoked after the war by the so-called Settlement Agreement (accord de règlement) of 1946.
page 238 note 9. Treaty of 23 March 1907 (Martens, , N.R.G.3, II, 38Google Scholar). By this treaty the Siamese territories of Battambang, Siem Reap and Sisophon were ceded to France in exchange for the Cambodian territories of Dan-Saï and Kratt and certain islands. The result of this exchange was, inter alia, to shift Cambodia's frontier to the west, so that the Dangrek range came to constitute the boundary also to the west of the Kel pass.
page 238 note 10. Apart from the appearance of a Siamese keeper at the temple ruins in 1940 under the Japanese occupation.
page 240 note 11. One cannot fully understand the argument without consulting the relevant provisions of the main treaty texts.
Treaty of 13 February 1904.
“Article 1. La frontière entre le Siam et le Cambodge part, sur la rive gauche du Grand Lac, de l'embouchure de la rivière Stung Roluos, elle suit le parallèle de ce point dans la direction de l'est jusqu'à la rencontre de la rivière Prék Kompong Tiam, puis, remontant vers le nord, elle se confond avec le méridien de ce point de rencontre jusqu'à la chaîne de montagnes Pnom Dang Rek. De là elle suit la ligne de partage des eaux entre les bassins du Nam Sen et du Mékong, d'une part, et du Nam Moun, d'autre part, et rejoint la chaîne Pnom Padang dont elle suit la crête vers l'est jusqu'au Mékong…”
“Article 3. II sera procédé à la délimitation des frontières entre le royaume de Siam et les territoires formant l'Indo-Chine française. Cette délimitation sera effectuée par des commissions mixtes composées d'officiers nommés par les deux pays contractants…”
Treaty of 23 March 1907.
“Article IV. Une Commission Mixte, composée d'officiers et de fonctionnaires Français et Siamois, sera nommée par les deux pays contractants… et chargée de délimiter les nouvelles frontières. Elle commencera ses travaux dès que la saison le permettra et les poursuivra en se conformant au Protocole de Délimitation annexé au présent Traité.”
Protocole annexé.
“Clause I. La frontière entre l'Indo-Chine Française et le Siam part de la mer… (D'un point situé sur la rivière Sisophon,) enfin, elle se continue en droite ligne jusqu'à un point situé sur les Dang-Reck, à mi-chemin entre les passes appelées Chong-Ta-Koh and Chong-Sa-Met… A partir du point ci-dessus mentionné situé sur la crête des Dang-Reck, la frontière suit la ligne de partage des eaux entre le Bassin du Grand Lac et du Mékong d'une part, et le Bassin du NamMoun d'autre part, et aboutit au Mékong en aval de Pak-Moun, à l'embouchure du Huei-Doue, conformément au tracé adopté par la précédente Commission de Délimitation du 18 Janvier, 1907. — Un croquis schématique de la frontière décrite ci-dessus est annexé au présent Protocole.”
“Clause III. La Commission de Délimitation prévue à l'Article IV du Traité en date de ce jour aura à déterminer et à tracer, au besoin sur le terrain, la partie de la frontière décrite dans la Clause I du présent Protocole. Si, au cours des opérations de d´limitation, le Gouvernement Français désirait obtenir une rectification de frontière dans le but de substituer des lignes naturelles à des lignes conventionnelles, cette rectification ne pourrait être faite, dans aucun cas, au détriment du Gouvernement Siamois.”
The treaty texts of 14 February 1925 (Article 27) and 7 December 1937 (Article 22) are practically identical on this point; I therefore quote only the latter Article:
“Le présent traité sera … substitué au traité … conclu … le 14 février 1925. Il annulera, en outre, … les autres traités, conventions et arrangements passés entre la France et le Siam, exception faite toutefois des clauses relatives à la définition et à la délimitation des frontières, … (contenues dans le traité du 23 mars 1907 et son protocole annexe et le traité du 14 février 1925) …”
page 245 note 12. Comp. above in the text ad note 9).
page 251 note 13. How subtle are the nuances of the doctrine and how uncertain are the limits of its application is, however, strikingly evidenced by the fact that the many quotations, collected by Judge Alfaro in support of the principle of “preclusion”, comprise a recent pronouncement in favour of it by Sir Percy Spender, the strongest opponent of its application in the Temple case.
page 253 note 14. In that case the divergence of the lines of the watershed and of the crest of the Cordilleras de los Andes, still considered identical in the Argentino-Chilean boundary treaty of 23 July 1881 (Martens, , N.R.G.1, XII, 491Google Scholar; Article 1: “El limite entre la República Argentina y Chile es, de Norte a Sur hasta el paralelo 52 de latitud, la Cordillera de los Andes. La linea fronteriza correrá en esa extensión por las cumbres más elevadas de dichas Cordilleras que dividen las aguas y pasará por entre las vertientes que se desprenden a un lado y otro…”), had revealed itself to be enormous and of the utmost practical importance. Comp. on this case: Politis, La justice internationale, p. 62 ff.Google Scholar
page 254 note 15. Martens, , N.R.G.1, XX, 238.Google Scholar This was the treaty by which Siam recognized the protectorate of France over Cambodia, established in 1863, and abandoned her own claims to suzerainty over Cambodia as her vassal State. —At that time the boundary still ran to the south of the mountain range through the Cambodian plain. This interpretation would, however, seem untenable in view of the fact that the new boundary tracé of 1904 has since been confirmed in 1907, 1925 and 1937.
page 256 note 16. I note, in particular, a counter-offensive by Judge Wellington Koo (p. 89) against the argument of the Court that Siam should in any case in the course of her discussions with France before the Conciliation Commission of 1947 have claimed a rectification of the frontier at Preah Vihear on the ground that the delimitation on the map embodied a serious error which would have caused her to reject it had she known of it in 1908–1909. The Chinese Judge instead argues that it would, on the contrary, have been more appropriate for France to make a protest at the time on the ground that Siam kept the temple under continuous watch since 1940: obviously an acquiescence of France!
page 257 note 17. I found it very difficult to summarize this dissenting opinion owing not only to the mass of factual detail packed into it, but also to a certain lack of order in the exposition of the various controversial issues and a consequent repetitiveness.
page 257 note 18. Comp. note 9) and for the text of Clause I of the Protocol note 11). When referring to the tracé adopted by the first Commission of Delimitation on 18 January 1907, that text cannot possibly have had in view a not yet existing map, nor, for that matter, does it mention any. The reference to the adoption of a particular line in the meeting of 18 January 1907 obviously related, as also follows from the text itself, to the fixation of the eastern extremity of the northern frontier near the Mekong river.—The croquis schématique mentioned in the last sentence of Clause I did not cover the Dangrek region either.
page 259 note 19. Was the second Commission of Delimitation really empowered to determine and trace anew the frontier along the eastern part of the Dangrek range? And was it perhaps not only empowered but even obliged to do so? When analysing the relevant texts of 1907, quoted in note II), one sees that the second Commission was only charged (Article IV) with the task of delimiting the new frontiers, and in 1907 the only new stretches were the southern section between the sea and the Kel pass (inclusive of the western sector of the Dangrek range) and the Pnom Padang where the watershed line was substituted for the crest line; the eastern sector of the Dangrek chain between those two sectors remaining unaltered. Moreover, what precisely have the Parties intended by saying (Clause III): “La Commission … aura à déterminer et à tracer, au besoin sur le terrain, la partie de la frontière, etc.”? In the text of the 1907 treaty as published by de Martens, , N.R.G.3, II, p. 38Google Scholar, the words “au besoin sur le terrain” are clearly preceded and followed by a comma. Judge Wellington Koo, in the original, English text of his dissenting opinion (p. 80, left), changes the interpunction into “trace if necessary, on the spot, that portion of the frontier etc.”, whereas in the re-translation of this text into French (p. 80, right) both comma's are left out: “tracer au besoin sur le terrain la partie de la frontière etc.”. The “part of the frontier” concerned was, as Clause I proves, the whole boundary between Siam and the Cambodian part of Indochina (from the sea to the Mekong), to the exclusion of that between Siam and the Laotian part of it more to the north. Had the second Mixed Commission the positive task (“La Commission aura à déterminer et tracer…”) of tracing the whole frontier again in any case, with the freedom of doing that “on the spot” only if it should deem this necessary? Or was it charged with tracing that part of the frontier only where it was new and where it was necessary to do so, and then of course on the spot? The provisions are very confusing. Comp. on this puzzle also the remarks made by the British Judge on p. 56/57, with whose conclusion I do not, however, hesitate to disagree. According to his analysis not only has the true watershed line (of the 1904 treaty) along the eastern Dangrek range been supplanted by the false watershed line of the map, but also the new watershed line (of the 1907 treaty) along the prolongation of that range to the east, the Pnom Padang, by the old crest line there, as drawn on the fatal map in conformity with the older treaty of 1904.