Thailand confirmed it will participate in a compulsory conciliation process under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that Cambodia invoked to address the two countries' overlapping maritime claims in the Gulf of Thailand, the Bangkok Post reported on June 5. In a parallel move explicitly framed as punitive, Bangkok said its participation in the conciliation process means it will halt all other bilateral talks with Cambodia on land border issues.

Cambodia launched the process after Thailand unilaterally ended a 2001 framework agreement for talks on the disputed maritime area in May, arguing that bilateral efforts had been exhausted. This episode moreover points to a broader trend in which Thailand prefers to deal with both land and maritime disputes bilaterally, whereas Cambodia seeks to internationalize them as much as possible.