Baby Cameron Todd is too young to thank his mother for battling to have him accepted as a citizen of a European country.

Angela Ackerstaff, 22, a Dutch resident, has been locked in a three-month wrangle with British and Dutch authorities trying to get one of them to give her four-month-old son a passport.

Baby Cameron Todd with his mother, Angela Ackerstaff

Miss Ackerstaff has been living with her parents -- Gerry, 47, who holds a Dutch passport, and Wendy, 45, who is English -- in Farmers Close, Witney, since Cameron was born.

Her parents are preparing to leave Britain to start a new life in Spain.

She had wanted to be able to join them, and to take Cameron on a visit to see her grandmother in South Africa.

She encountered problems after the baby's English father, Gary Todd, 27, disappeared from the home they had previously shared in Watford. Both Britain and Holland demanded the father give his permission for the passport, but Mr Todd could not be traced.

Miss Ackerstaff was told by the Passport Office that children born in the UK to parents from the European Union were not automatically entitled to British citizenship.

A Home Office spokesman said EU nationals could apply for UK citizenship on behalf of their children, if it could be shown they had one British parent and both parents had given permission.

Miss Ackerstaff was told by the Passport Office Cameron needed to be resident in the UK for a year to be eligible.

In frustration at British red tape, she applied to the Netherlands for a passport but claims she faced similar difficulties.

She was finally informed the Netherlands had agreed to give him a passport after the Oxford Mail called its embassy to highlight her plight.

A Home Office spokesman said: "People wishing to apply for a British passport need to hold British citizenship.

"An EU national would need to apply for citizenship in the UK before being able to apply for a British passport."