SINGAPORE: Singapore and Malaysia took steps on Thursday to cool down escalating tensions on maritime boundaries by agreeing to revert to their original port limits.
The two countries agreed to "mutually suspend the implementation of their overlapping port limits," said a joint statement issued after a meeting between Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and his Malaysian counterpart Saifuddin Abdullah in Malaysia's administrative capital of Putrajaya.
They will for the time revert to the status quo that they had respectively held before the spat erupted late last year.
"These measures taken by both countries shall be without prejudice to Malaysia's and Singapore's respective maritime boundary claims in the area," the statement said.
In the event that an amicable solution on delimitation cannot be reached, the two sides may mutually agree to resort to an international third-party dispute settlement procedure, it added.
At the same time they will suspend all commercial activities in the area and will not anchor government vessels in the area. Malaysia had sent a couple of government vessels to waters disputed between the two countries in recent months.
The meeting between the two ministers had focused on maritime issues surrounding the overlapping Johor Bahru Port Limits off Tanjung Piai in Malaysia's southernmost state of Johor and Singapore Port Limits off Singapore's western corner of Tuas, which are separated by the narrow Straits of Johor.
Relations between the two close neighbours have soured in recent months over their differences on issues such as Malaysia's right to review the price of water that Malaysia sells to Singapore, and the control of Malaysia's airspace.
While their ties had also been patchy in the past, there appeared to have been a lull in bilateral tension in recent years. But old conflicts resurfaced after the opposition coalition led by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad came to power in a general election in May last year.
Saifuddin told Malaysia's parliament earlier this week that Malaysia is prepared to bring the water dispute to international arbitration.
In response, the Singapore Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the city-state "has always been prepared to settle disputes by recourse to appropriate international third-party dispute settlement procedures, on terms mutually agreed to by the parties."