Abuja ready to discuss border dispute - Obasanjo

Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Tuesday he was ready to meet with Cameroon’s Paul Biya to seek ways to resolve a dispute over ownership of the Bakassi Peninsula. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, at which the Cameroonian government lodged a complaint eight years ago, awarded ownership of the peninsula to Cameroon on 10 October. However, Nigeria rejected the ruling, accusing the ICJ of favouring colonial treaties rather than the original ownership title of the mainly Nigerian population of the oil-rich peninsula. "I am ready to meet with President Paul Biya of Cameroon anytime, anywhere to work out a political solution," Obasanjo told a delegation of Bakassi leaders who visited him in the capital, Abuja, to express displeasure with the ICJ verdict. Obasanjo said he had already spoken with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan about Nigeria’s readiness to pursue a peaceful, negotiated solution to the crisis. However, he described the ICJ ruling as "politically hard to swallow" and pledged not to compromise his country’s interests or the welfare of its people. "The judges of the International Court of Justice may just look at treaties and give judgment, but we cannot do the same," Obasanjo said. "For us Bakassi is real. It is men, women and children. It is people living in their homes, on their land..." The Bakassi delegation included federal legislators representing the area - senator Florence Ita-Giwa and representative Patrick Ene Okon - and officials of the Bakassi People Self-determination Front. It presented a nine-point declaration to Obasanjo rejecting the ICJ verdict. "It is not a judge that determines where a people come from as it is the people themselves that know where they come from," the group said in a statement. "We are Nigerian citizens. We do not have any other place to go." Britain and France, which administered separate parts of Cameroon after World War I, on Tuesday denied insinuations in Nigeria that their governments influenced the ruling of the ICJ. Britain had signed a 1913 treaty ceding the peninsula to Germany, then ruler of Cameroon, on which the ICJ based its ruling. British High Commissioner Philip Thomas said the British judge at the ICJ acted in his individual capacity and not under government influence. Thomas restated his government’s position that Nigeria should obey the ICJ ruling but said he was delighted that the country had pledged not to go to war over the dispute. France in a statement from its embassy in Nigeria said it remained neutral in the dispute and wished to see both countries working towards a peaceful resolution of the border crisis.