By ANDRE BAGOO Saturday, September 6 2008

THIS country will not object to Barbados’ application for a 150-mile extension to its maritime border, notwithstanding an allegation that Barbados has violated rules governing the high- powered international commission currently determining the issue and notwithstanding a potential conflict between that country’s application with one to be made by this country.

TT is contending that Barbados breached the rules governing the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) by lodging an application with that body without consulting this country.

“Even though Barbados breached the Commission’s rules by failing to consult with Trinidad and Tobago as an interested coastal State, Trinidad and Tobago has decided not to object to the Barbados submission,” the Treaties, International Agreements and Legal Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week in response to questions posed by Newsday.

This position was made public by Minister of Foreign Affairs at a press conference at Knowsley yesterday. On June 3, 2008, the Barbados minister of foreign affairs, Donville Inniss, told the Barbados parliament that the country has submitted an application to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to have its continental shelf extended by 150 miles.

That application, lodged May 8, asks the CLCS to consider delimiting Barbados’s maritime space in such a way that it will be entitled to 12 miles of territorial sea, plus an exclusive economic zone that was worked out by a UN tribunal in April 2006 at the Hague and then 150 miles of new continental space.

“Trinidad and Tobago takes the view that the Commission should be allowed to do its work to determine where national jurisdiction ends and the jurisdiction of the International Seabed Authority begins,” the ministry said in a statement.

“(Trinidad and Tobago) has nevertheless drawn the Commission’s attention to Barbados’s breach of the Commission’s rules,” the statement said. “It has also informed the Commission that Trinidad and Tobago reserves all of its rights under the UN Convention of the Laws of the Sea and that it will be making a submission to the Commission.”

The ministry warns that, “it anticipates that there will be areas of potential overlapping entitlements between Trinidad and Tobago,” in this application.

The development threatens to develop into a renewed maritime border conflict between the two countries and to re-open old wounds in the relationship between this country and Barbados.

Last month, a 14-member Barbadian delegation flew to New York to persuade the CLCS into granting the 150 miles of additional space. The Commission will make a decision within the next 18 to 36 months. The issue also underlines criticisms made of the 2006 Hague ruling which was widely believed to have resolved maritime disputes between this country and Barbados.

This week Stephen Kangal, a retired foreign service official who was once a member of the Institute of International Relations, said Barbados’ application is based on a flawed demarcation of maritime boundaries contained in the 2006 UN ruling.