He said the briefing should not have been classified under the Official Secrets Act.

Chan said he and fellow opposition MPs had been looking forward to the briefing, but left feeling disappointed.

He said the closed-door briefing, held on Thursday at the Seri Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, was conducted by law minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar and Attorney-General Idrus Harun.

“I thought the senior government officials would be sharing with us some state secrets or strategies, but it turned out that they were just summarising most of the timeline of events regarding the claims by the descendants of the Sulu sultanate.

“This information can already be found on the internet and in the media. There was nothing that we didn’t already know,” said the DAP man.

He urged Dewan Rakyat Speaker Azhar Harun to accept a motion to debate the decision by former prime minister Najib Razak in 2013 to stop paying the Sulu heirs in the wake of an armed incursion in Lahad Datu.

“Although it seems to be related to the ongoing Sulu claim case, it is actually not directly related. I sincerely hope that the Speaker will accept this motion and allow a debate,” he said.

The motion for a debate was proposed by Putatan MP Awang Husaini Sahari.

In the past week, the Speaker had thrice rejected a motion for a debate raised by Kota Belud MP Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis. She was later booted from the Dewan Rakyat and suspended for two days after refusing to back down over the matter.

The motions for a debate and the briefing for MPs come in the wake of two writs of seizure obtained against Petronas subsidiaries in Azerbaijan based on a French arbitration court decision in March in favour of the Sulu heirs.

The Sulu heirs have filed a claim for US$15 billion (about RM66 billion) in compensation after Malaysia suspended annual payments to the heirs for ceding sovereignty over Sabah in 1878.