Gabon, Equatorial Guinea end island dispute

Gabon and Equatorial Guinea signed an agreement on Tuesday ending a decades-long dispute over three small islands in potentially oil-rich waters after the International Court of Justice backed Equatorial Guinea.

The two west African countries had disputed the 30-hectare island of Mbanie and two smaller islets, Cocotiers and Conga, since the early 1970s.

At a ceremony at the African Union's headquarters in Addis Ababa, Equatorial Guinean Foreign Minister Simeon Oyono Esono Angue and Gabon's head of the Constitutional Council, Dieudonne Aba'a Owono, signed an accord committing both countries to respect the court's decision.

African Union Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf also signed the agreement and welcomed the resolution of a border dispute that he said had lasted too long.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled in favour of Equatorial Guinea in May last year. The court found that the 1974 Bata Convention did not give Gabon legal title to the islands, which had been held by Spain and passed to Equatorial Guinea at independence in 1968.

The dispute traced back to a 1900 treaty between France and Spain setting borders in the area. Gabon had argued that the later Bata Convention fixed the islands' sovereignty in its favour.

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