Sulu claims: 1903 agreement removed any ambiguity

IN 1878, the sultan of Sulu decided to grant what is now Sabah to a British company.

The bone of contention in the 1878 agreement is the Malay word, 'pajakkan'.

Spanish linguists in 1878 and American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer and Harold Conklin in 1946 translated 'pajakkan' as 'arrendamiento' or 'to lease'. The British used the interpretation of historian Najeeb Mitry Saleeby in 1908, and William George Maxwell and William Summer Gibson in 1924, which translated 'pajakkan' as 'to grant and cede'.

Any ambiguity was settled in 1903, when Sultan Jamalul Kiram II signed a document known as the "Confirmation of cession of certain islands", under which he ceded to the British North Borneo Company additional islands in the vicinity of the mainland of North Borneo from Banggi Island to Sibuku Bay.

In the 1903 agreement, the ambiguous term 'pajakkan' was no longer used. Instead, the phrase "kita telah keredai menyerahkan kepada pemerintah British North Borneo", which literally means "we have willingly surrendered to the Government of British North Borneo", was used.

The confirmatory deed of 1903 makes it known and understood between the two parties that the islands were included in the cession of the districts and islands stated in the 1878 agreement.