Two days af­ter Kenya’s for­eign min­is­ter said that So­ma­lia had agreed to pur­sue ar­bi­tra­tion out­side the United Na­tion’s high­est court to end the long-run­ning bor­der dis­pute linked to lu­cra­tive oil and gas re­serves in the In­dian Ocean, So­ma­lia in­sists on le­gal case to re­solve the mat­ter.

Speak­ing at the par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Ms. Am­ina Mo­hamed said that Kenya has re­ceived a pledge from So­ma­lia that it would with­draw its pre­vi­ous case it filed at the In­ter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court and would seek out­side court dis­pute res­o­lu­tion.

How­ever, So­ma­lia re­mains stead­fast in its com­mit­ment to pur­sue its le­gal case to end the cur­rent dis­putes with the neigh­bor­ing Kenya.

“So­ma­lia would like to clar­ify and re­it­er­ate its com­mit­ment to the le­gal case and pro­ceed­ings at the In­ter­na­tional Court of Jus­tice in The Hague within the frame­work of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea (UN­C­LOS).” said a state­ment from So­ma­li­a’s for­eign min­istry Wednes­day.

In the care­fully worded short state­ment, So­ma­lia re­it­er­ates that con­trary to Kenya’s stand, the horn of Africa na­tion is still pur­su­ing the le­gal case at the ICC.

“In­ter­na­tional in­vest­ment, pros­per­ity and the eco­nomic growth of So­ma­lia and its neigh­bors de­pend on this is­sue be­ing re­solved and we stand firm by the le­gal case we put for­ward.” the state­ment fur­ther
 stated.

Last year, So­ma­li­a’s gov­ern­ment has taken Kenya to the ICC to end the bor­der dis­pute, say­ing the dis­pute risks de­ter­ring multi­na­tional oil com­pa­nies from ex­plor­ing for oil and gas off­shore East Africa.

Kenya re­cently iden­ti­fied eight new off­shore ex­plo­ration blocks avail­able for li­cens­ing, and all but one of them are lo­cated in the con­tested area.

So­ma­lia has said the dis­pute risks de­ter­ring multi­na­tional oil com­pa­nies from ex­plor­ing for oil and gas off­shore East Africa, ac­cord­ing to Kenya’s Busi­ness Daily news­pa­per.

Click here to read So­mali Gov­ern­men­t’s Press State­ment on this is­sue