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Somalia snubs out-of-court talks in Kenya border dispute

Storyline:National News

Somalia will on Monday formally file a complaint against Kenya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), dashing hopes for an out-court-settlement over the long-running border dispute linked to lucrative oil and gas reserves in the Indian Ocean.

Somalia’s Information minister Mohamed Abdi Maareeye said a group of international lawyers representing the Somali government will present a 150-page court filing at the ICJ on July 13, which Kenya will later respond to.

“The issue of the Kenyan government violations against our territorial waters has continued for a long time, so it’s the right time to end its fake claim in court,” Mr Maareeye was quoted by Bloomberg as having told reporters on Wednesday in the capital, Mogadishu.

This comes days after Foreign Affairs secretary Amina Mohamed told Parliament that Somali has agreed to pursue arbitration outside the United Nation’s highest court.

“We have received a pledge from the federal government of Somalia indicating readiness to withdraw a case it filed in New York for us to resolve maritime boundary issues,” Ms Mohamed told Parliament.

Somalia had also filed a formal claim for a bigger chunk of the continental shelf at the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—which is based in New York.

Somalia on August 28, 2014 asked the ICJ in The Hague to determine the maritime boundary between the coastal nations, which disagree about the rights for exploration and collection of revenue from oil discoveries.

The ICJ had given Somalia up to July 13 to formally submit its claims to the huge swathe of maritime territory in dispute, considered to be rich in oil deposits and fish stocks. But Kenya has been keen on an out-court settlement, which now appears dim with the Monday filling.

Kenya and the Somalia government have since 2011 been involved in the fight against Al- Shabaab militants in the war-torn country. Al- Shabaab has been blamed for a string of attacks inside Kenya that in the past two years killed about 500 people.

Somalia wants the maritime border to continue along the line of the land border, to the southeast diagonally and says a horizontal border would be unfair.

Kenya, however, wants the sea border to go in a straight line east, giving it more sea territory. If it goes the Somalia way, Kenya would be left with a small triangle in the Indian Ocean for mineral rights, losing at least seven oil blocks it has offered explorers.

The dispute has been running for years, keeping investors away because of the lack of legal clarity over who owns potential offshore oil and gas reserves.