World Court backs Equatorial Guinea in islands dispute with Gabon

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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Monday that Equatorial Guinea has a legal claim to a cluster of small islands in potentially oil-rich waters in the Gulf of Guinea, settling a decades-long dispute with neighbouring Gabon.

In its final and binding ruling the ICJ, also known as the World Court, sided with Equatorial Guinea and said its claim on the islands based on a 1900 convention dividing up French and Spanish colonial assets in West Africa should be honoured.

In its ruling, the court said a 1974 agreement on which Gabon based its claim on the islands could not be seen as a treaty with the force of law.

“The title that has the force of law in so far as it concerns sovereignty over the islands .. is the title held by the Kingdom of Spain on 12 October 1968, to which the Republic of Equatorial Guinea succeeded,” it said.

The ruling means Gabon will have to remove its soldiers from the tiny island of Mbanié, less than a kilometre long, off the coast of Gabon.

In 1972 Gabon’s army drove Equatorial Guinea’s soldiers from Mbanié. Gabon has since set up its own military presence on the virtually uninhabited island of just 74 acres (30 hectares).

The dispute over Mbanié and the two tiny nearby islands of Cocotiers and Conga fell by the wayside until the early 2000s, when the prospect of oil rekindled interest in the Gulf of Guinea.

After years of mediation by the United Nations, the African neighbours, both significant oil producers, in 2016 signed an agreement that would ultimately let the World Court settle the matter.

(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, Charlotte Van Campenhout and Bart Meijer; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Hugh Lawson)