Gabon and Equatorial Guinea signed an agreement on Tuesday ending a decades-long dispute over three tiny islands in potentially oil-rich waters after the top UN court backed Malabo. In May last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, which rules in disputes between states, found in favour of Equatorial Guinea. AU Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who also signed the agreement, welcomed the resolution of a border dispute that he said had gone on for too long. Gabon argued that a later treaty, the 1974 Bata Convention, then fixed the islands' sovereignty in its favour. The court ruled that the Bata Convention did not constitute a legal title to the islands, which was held by Spain and had passed to Equatorial Guinea upon independence in 1968.