Indonesia the world, extending from east to west and from north to south. According to the country's Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, Indonesia has 17,504 islands (16,056 of which are registered at the UN), scattered over both sides of the equator, and with about 6,000 of them are inhabited. The largest are Java, Sumatra, Borneo (shared with Brunei and Malaysia), Sulawesi, and New Guinea (shared with Papua New Guinea). Indonesia shares land borders with Malaysia on Borneo, Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea, and East Timor on the island of Timor, and maritime borders with Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam,
Indonesia–Malaysia border dispute originated in 1969 when the two countries negotiated to delimit the common border of their continental shelf. As the two countries could not agree on the soveignty of the two islands, the continental shelf border was left off the 1969 agreement between the two countries. Indonesia claimed that the islands were theirs by virtue of the fact that they were located south of 4° 10" North which it said formed the maritime border between it and Malaysia by virtue of a straight line extension of the land border which ended on the east coast Sebatik island. Malaysia however, claimed