Asia-Pacific
Google enters fray in Thai-Cambodia border dispute
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-10 14:54
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Google Inc said on Wednesday it would look into a complaint from Cambodia that an online map showing the country's border with Thailand was wrong, though it stopped short of saying it would change the document.
The Internet giant was responding to a request last week from Cambodia to replace a Google Earth map that the government said was "devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious."
Cambodian-Thai relations have been strained by competing claims to the border area near an 11th-century mountaintop temple called Preah Vihear. The world court awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but sovereignty over the surrounding land has never been clearly resolved.
Several gun battles in the area since 2008 have killed at least seven Thai and Cambodian soldiers, and both sides have refused to back away from their positions, each saying it has the rightful claim to the land.
Cambodia complained in its letter to Google that the map features a border that would put half the temple in Thailand.
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"We understand that the governments of both Thailand and Cambodia are pursuing bilateral negotiations to clarify the existing borders between the two countries and we would be happy to review any authoritative border data which the government of Cambodia can provide," said the letter, dated February 9 and signed by Ross LaJeunesse, Google's head of public policy and government affairs for Asia Pacific.
A spokeswoman for Tele Atlas could not immediately be reached for comment.
Cambodia wants Google to replace its current map with one the government says was accepted in 1908 by Thailand.
