ICJ to rule on Gabon and E Guinea spat

THE top UN court was yesterday expected rule on a decades-long dispute between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea over three tiny islands in potentially oil-rich waters.

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The two west African nations have been squabbling over the 30-hectare (74-acre) island of Mbanie and two smaller low-lying islets, Cocotier and Conga, since the early 1970s.

The islands themselves are tiny and virtually uninhabited but lie in an area potentially rich in oil and gas.

The dispute dates all the way back to 1900, when then colonial powers France and Spain signed a treaty in Paris setting out the borders between the two countries.

But Gabon believes that a later treaty, the 1974 Bata Convention, then fixed the islands’ sovereignty in their favour.