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By Adu Koranteng
President Akufo-Addo is expected to meet with some diplomats from Côte d’Ivoire over Saturday’s landmark judgment by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on the two countries’ maritime dispute.
The meeting which is scheduled to take place later this week will see the two parties come up with a plan on how to actualize the judgment of the court.
The Minister for Information, Mustapha Hamid, in an interview with journalists in Accra, said the President will speak formally on the court’s judgment at the meeting.
“In this coming week, the Ivorian President will send envoys to Ghana and together the two governments will tell the world what it is they are willing to do in respect to this judgment. For now, the President will hold his peace until that engagement with the Ivorian envoys, and then we can let the Ghanaian people know what the formal positions of the two governments are with regards to the ITLOS government,” Mustapha Hamid said.
The Special Chamber of ITLOS in a unanimous decision on Saturday September 23, 2017, ruled that there has not been any violation on the part of Ghana on Côte d’Ivoire’s maritime boundary.
It rejected Côte d’Ivoire’s argument that Ghana’s coastal lines were unstable, noting that Ghana has not violated Côte d’Ivoire’s sovereign rights with its oil exploration in the disputed basin.
Justice Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber in reading the judgment, accepted Ghana’s argument of adoption of the equidistance method of delineation of the maritime boundary.
In consideration of the new boundary, the Chamber determined that it starts from boundary 55 -200 nautical miles away, a position much closer to what Ghana was arguing for.
Analysts say Ghana would now have to wait to see how the final map looks, once the coordinates are plotted in the sea using boundary pillar BP 55+ on a common land boundary, as a starting point for drawing the new equidistance line.
In 2014, Ghana took the case to ITLOS to dispel claims it has encroached Cote d’Ivoire’s marine borders as part of oil exploration activities at Cape Three Points, off the shores of the Western Region.
Ghana’s defense held that Cote d’Ivoire was barred from demanding ownership to the disputed area they had acknowledged that Ghana owned without any qualms in the decades leading up to the oil discovery.
Cote D’lvoire, Ghana accept ITLOS judgement on maritime dispute.Agents who represented Ghana and Cote D’lvoire, Gloria Akuffo and Adama Toungara, have already said they accept the judgement on the case.
This was contained in a joint statement released hours after the Chamber’s judgement on Saturday.
