SINGAPORE, Feb 6 — Having studied Malaysia’s application to the International Court of Justice to revise its judgment on Pedra Branca, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam has reiterated that he cannot see what the new facts are that Malaysia has discovered.

Nor does he see how the documents Malaysia found in the United Kingdom’s archives would make any difference now or even before the judgment was rendered in 2008, though he added that he was speaking without the benefit of legal advice.

Malaysia is challenging the Pedra Branca judgment using three documents: Internal correspondence of the Singapore colonial authorities in 1958, an incident report filed in 1958 by a British naval officer and an annotated map of naval operations from the 1960s. The country claims these documents establish that “officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory” during the relevant period.

Speaking to Channel NewsAsia yesterday morning in his Chong Pang ward, Shanmugam said he had no doubt that Singapore has put together the “best team” to study the matter and respond. The team includes Attorney-General Lucien Wong, Professor S Jayakumar, Professor Tommy Koh and former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong.

“Their knowledge in international law is unquestioned, and also their knowledge in the facts of this case cannot be matched because they actually dealt with it for years — for five years — and took it to the tribunal,” said Mr Shanmugam. “We’re very happy that they’ve agreed to come back and deal with this issue which arises from the main dispute. So the knowledge, the understanding, the detailed assessment which they have is invaluable.”

The Pedra Branca veterans will be assisted by lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Chambers.

On whether the issue would affect bilateral ties, Shanmugam said countries will always have differences and that issues would fester if left unresolved. “In our view as a small country, the best way of resolving these differences is to have the dispute ... decided by a neutral international tribunal, because if you look at the other ways of resolving disputes, they’re not very attractive,” he said. — TODAY