BEIRUT: As the Lebanese government struggles to defend its right to offshore natural resources, with the issue expected to be discussed in Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, a series of diplomatic missteps in recent years has undercut Beirut’s negotiating stance.

Sources familiar with the issue said the Turkish government’s rejection of the proposed demarcation of maritime borders between Lebanon and Cyprus in 2007 was the reason behind the failure of the Lebanese and Cypriot governments to ratify their agreement.

According to international law, countries with shared maritime borders must reach bilateral agreements for the demarcation of the borders. Based on this, Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus are obliged to complete a tripartite agreement on the demarcation of the maritime area they share.

Last month, the Israeli government approved a map of its proposed maritime borders with Cyprus, which Lebanon considered an “aggression” against its oil and gas rights, saying that the Israeli map transgresses Lebanese maritime territory.

The sources said Lebanon committed a diplomatic error in 2007 during bilateral discussions with the Cypriot government on the maritime borders, when the Lebanese negotiator provided erroneous information to his Cypriot counterpart.

The maritime information Cyprus used during negotiations with Israel was subsequently based on the information that was given to them by the Lebanese diplomat. As a result, Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone shrunk by more than 17 square kilometers.

In 2009, Lebanon established a joint parliamentary committee of Public Works, Transport, Energy and Water to deal with the demarcation of the maritime border. The joint parliamentary committee applied revised numbers for the country’s EEZ, but the information put forward by the diplomat in 2007 was the one that remained on the Cypriot documents.

As Lebanon launched its campaign against the Israeli-Cypriot agreement, Israel said it would submit the map of its maritime borders with Cyprus to the United Nations, which conflicts significantly with the informationproposed by Lebanon in its own submission to the U.N. last summer.

Three years after the negotiations of 2007, Lebanon unilaterally notified the U.N. of its maritime borders with Israel, in July 2010. Four months later, Lebanon proposed to the U.N. its outline of the boundary of its EEZ, which contains oil and gas.

However, in December 2010 Nicosia signed an agreement with Israel, in which the maritime areas Lebanon proposed to the U.N. as part of its EEZ were placed in the Israeli EEZ.

In technical terms, the agreement means that both sides adopted “Point 1” as the final point of intersection among the three countries, while a solution will only be reached by getting Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus to agree on a new point.

In response to the Israeli government’s approval of its maritime borders map, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told The Daily Star last week that Lebanon would file a complaint with the U.N. against Israel.

Since its agreement with Cyprus, Israel has been working to develop several large offshore natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, some shared with Cyprus, that it hopes could help it to become an energy exporter. But its development plans have stirred controversy with Lebanon, which argues the gas fields lie inside its territorial waters.