Neth Pheaktra published on 31 August that the 1962 and 2013 rulings on Prasat Preah Vihear did not fix the whole border. Three days earlier the office that speaks for Thailand had said that where troops stand under the ceasefire does not fix it either.
Cambodia’s Minister of Information, Neth Pheaktra, published a message on 31 August arguing that the ceasefire terms signed last December are not a boundary treaty. Inside that argument he put a limit on how far two court rulings in Cambodia’s favour reach. Cambodia’s state news agency, Agence Kampuchea Presse, carried the full text the next day.
The 1962 and 2013 judgments of the International Court of Justice dealt with the temple of Prasat Preah Vihear and the ground inside their scope. That court is the United Nations court that settles disputes between countries. The rulings should not be read, the message said, as having fixed the whole border with Thailand.
The narrowing is Cambodia’s own, and it lands on the rulings Cambodia’s own government reaches for. It concedes Thailand no particular ground. Inside the area the two rulings covered, they stand.
The same message gave the Joint Boundary Commission high priority, and said both sides did so precisely because the December terms are not a boundary treaty. That commission is where the two countries survey and mark the border.
On 28 August, three days before that message, the director of Thailand’s Joint Information Centre said that holding the ground troops stand on under a ceasefire is not the same as seizing territory. That office speaks for Thailand on this dispute.
Where the border actually runs, he added, should be settled through the two countries’ border bodies rather than by whichever army is standing on the ground. The Thai outlet Thaiger carried the remarks the next day. This is what Thailand says, carried by one outlet.
Point 3 of the Joint Statement of 27 December 2025 says that nothing arranged under it affects where the border is marked on the ground or where the international boundary lies. Those are the ceasefire terms the two of them signed in December. The two sides agreed there to send the work back to the Joint Boundary Commission and resume survey and marking at the earliest.
Fixing a border in writing is one job. Putting an agreed border physically on the ground is another. Point 3 keeps the ceasefire clear of both. Where troops stand under it does not locate the line for Thailand, and its terms carry no title for Cambodia.
On 1 September, in Belgrade, Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sok Chenda Sophea told a meeting marking 65 years of the Non-Aligned Movement that Thailand keeps acting alone deep inside Cambodian territory. He said it does so despite what the two sides have already agreed and despite the binding judgments of the International Court of Justice. He named barbed wire, permanent structures and Cambodian civilians displaced. The same state news agency carried his remarks.
The judgments he called binding are the two Neth Pheaktra had described the day before as not having fixed the border. What the Deputy Prime Minister put to that meeting is Cambodia’s case. He is accusing Thailand, and an accusation is not a court’s finding.
Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence said that morning that its liaison group had coordinated visits by the ASEAN observer team to three places in Koh Kong province. That group is the Cambodian military unit that arranges where the observers go. The observer team is the outside group that checks whether the ceasefire is being kept. Two of the three places were Boundary Pillar No. 72 and the Cham Yeam International Border Checkpoint. A boundary pillar is a marker fixing an agreed point on the line.
The release calls pillar 72 an agreed boundary pillar between Cambodia and Thailand. The word agreed there is Cambodia’s, written into Cambodia’s own release. Under the Joint Statement both sides recognised the observer team’s role in verifying that the measures set out in it are carried out. They agreed to strengthen that role.
That release names the old French and Siamese treaties, and the maps and survey records made under them, as what the line rests on. It names the two countries’ memorandum of understanding of 2000 on surveying and marking the border, and the working rules they agreed in 2003. Thailand rests on the same memorandum. In a statement of 11 March 2026 its foreign ministry said Cambodia had repeatedly failed to meet its obligations under that memorandum. The documents are shared. The reading is not.
