Government denies threatening force in territorial dispute

Cameroon's government has reaffirmed its determination to work towards a peaceful solution of its dispute with Nigeria over Bakassi, an oil-rich peninsula claimed by both countries. In a statement issued on 1 August, communication minister Jacques Fame Ndongo recalled that Cameroon had chosen the legal option by submitting the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. He said the two sides had finished submitting their cases to the ICJ, whose verdict was now being awaited. The communique came in reaction to a report last week in a local periodical, The Herald, which quoted a Nigerian newspaper as saying that a mobilisation of Nigerian military in the region was in response to the fear of seeing the Cameroonian authorities take the peninsula by force. The newspaper reported that Cameroon had deployed more gendarmes, military vehicles and other war material to the area. Fame Ndongo said Cameroon was a peaceloving state and wanted to preserve its internal and external security, sovereignty and territorial integrity not through force of arms, but by strictly respecting international law. The conflict over Bakassi Peninsula, which broke out in 1994, claimed many lives on both sides before it was submitted to the ICJ.