Cameroon soldier killed on disputed Bakassi peninsula

A Cameroon soldier was killed and another seriously injured this weekend in the first deadly incident reported in a decade on the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula disputed by Cameroon and Nigeria, according to a senior military officer in Yaounde. "A lance-sergeant was killed and a warrant officer seriously wounded … when Nigerian troops fired rocket-propelled grenades at a Cameroonian security post,” the officer told IRIN on Sunday. Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, the UN's Special Representative for West Africa who is spearheading negotiations on the disputed peninsula, confirmed on Radio France Internationale that there had been a death over the weekend. The Cameroonian government in Yaounde declined to comment on the incident, and in Nigeria, a military spokesman denied any involvement by Abuja. “It is not true,” Colonel Mohammed Danjuma Yusuf told IRIN. “We have no information about any clashes involving our troops in Bakassi.” “The only information we have is that there was a clash between fishermen and soldiers on the Cameroon side. It had nothing to do with us,” he added The peninsula is home to several thousand farmers and fishermen, most of whom fervently support continued Nigerian ownership of the territory. On Monday a special envoy for Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo met Cameroonian President Paul Biya and handed him a sealed envelope. The envoy, Owo Labi, who is Nigeria's High Commissioner to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) told journalists that he was unaware of the contents of the letter. Biya was accompanied by his justice minister, Amadou Ali, who is his chief negotiator on the Bakassi dispute. Nigeria currently occupies the Bakassi peninsula, a 1,000 square km finger of swampy forest that juts into the Gulf of Guinea. Nearby offshore waters on the Nigerian side contain large oil reserves, which are already being developed, but the maritime frontier between Cameroon and Nigeria has yet to be demarcated, so a large zone of disputed ownership has yet to be fully explored. The military source said the attack in the early hours of Saturday morning was the second by Nigerian troops against Cameroon military security installations in two weeks. Cameroon and Nigeria came to the brink of war over ownership of the peninsula in 1981 and in the 1990s. Nigeria had hoped for a bilateral settlement but Cameroon spurned any such idea and filed a suit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, which was successful. In October 2002, the ICJ attributed ownership of the peninsula to Cameroon, but Nigeria failed to meet a deadline to pull out its troops last September. Early this month Nigeria also failed to attend a scheduled meeting of the UN-led Mixed Commission, headed by Ould Abdallah. Speaking on Radio France Internationale at the weekend, Ould Abdallah called for calm. "This process is taking time,” he said. "One must remain level-headed....The alternative would be terrible.” Ould Abdallah last week told journalists that the Bakassi talks were progressing despite Nigeria’s failure to turn up at a June 10-15 meeting in Yaounde to work out strategies for implementing the ICJ ruling. He said survey work to mark the 1,700-km long border was going ahead and that Nigeria had left 32 villages. Obasanjo had initially agreed to withdraw Nigeria’s administration from Bakassi last September, but political opposition to the move back home forced him to backtrack on the commitment just a month before the troop pullout was due to take place. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged both Biya and Obasanjo to speed up the implementation of the ICJ verdict after meeting with both leaders last month in Geneva. Negotiations are continuing on demarcating the maritime boundary between the two countries. This is vital for determining which country gets to enjoy the benefits of any offshore oil found in the area, which adjoins Nigeria's existing offshore oilfields.