Malaysia on Friday reopened a decades-old dispute with Singapore calling on the UN's top court to overturn a 2008 ruling granting its neighbour sovereignty over a tiny but strategic island.
In a filing to the International Court of Justice, Kuala Lumpur maintained new documents had been discovered in British archives backing its territorial claim to the islet.
For several decades, Malaysia had laid claim to the island it knows as Pulau Batu Puteh, while Singapore, which calls it Pedra Branca, argued sovereignty had passed to it tacitly.
The island is in a strategically important position, 14 kilometres off Johor on the eastern approach to the Singapore Strait from the South China Sea.