Guyana seeks claim withdrawal, int’l court solution in Venezuela impasse

Jul 10, 2015 News

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Guyana’s plan to deal with the Venezuela issue in the short term is to have all threats withdrawn and afterwards seek a permanent juridical solution under international law.

Addressing Parliament for the second time within recent weeks, President David Granger, yesterday also urged the support of the National Assembly as Guyana defend its right to exist, its right to development, its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

His calls would be without the Opposition, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic, which only announced its Members of Parliament on Wednesday. It is unclear when that party, which lost on May 11th after 23 years in power, would be taking up their Parliamentary seats.

Granger’s address to Parliament also comes in wake of recent attempts by neighbouring Venezuela to claim over 150,000 km² of Guyana’s land-space and a significant part of the Atlantic Ocean. The country’s navy had started patrolling in Guyana’s waters.

Earlier this week too, the Venezuelan leader addressed his National Assembly calling for unity.

“Guyana will continue to pursue a wide range of diplomatic options as its first line of defence. Guyana remains resolute in defending itself against all forms of aggression. We remain wedded to the ideal of peace. We have never, as an independent state, provoked or used aggression against any other nation. We have never used our political clout to veto development projects in another country,” Granger stated.

The Head of State made it clear that Guyana never discouraged investors willing to invest in another country.

“We have never stymied development of another nation state. We do not expect, nor will we condone, any country attempting to do the same to us.”

Insisting that Guyana wants Caribbean to be a zone of peace, Granger found it preposterous that this country could be aggressive to Venezuela as was claimed earlier this week by President Nicolas Maduro.

BIGGER VENEZUELA

“Guyana has no interest or intention to be aggressive towards Venezuela, a country of 912,050 km², more than four times the size of Guyana; a country with a population of more than forty times that of Guyana; a country with armed forces — the National Bolivarian Armed Forces — FANB – with more than twenty times as many members as Guyana’s Defence Force. How can Guyana launch an aggression against Venezuela?”

Granger was firm that the Government of Guyana now expects the Government of Venezuela to observe, fully, “the 1897 Treaty, the 1899 Arbitral Award, the 1905 demarcation of the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela pursuant to the Arbitral Award, the 1966 Agreement and other formally ratified documents between the two states.”

Guyana’s relations with Venezuela have been relatively calm in recent years with significant trade in rice and oil. However, that may all end now as Venezuela, in light of the tensions, has signaled its intentions to end the rice deal this year.

This was after CARICOM called on Venezuela to withdraw a decree issued by Maduro on May 26, which unilaterally gave that country’s gunships rights in waters that belonged to Guyana, including a section in which oil was recently found by US-owned, ExxonMobil.

A number of states including the US, Barbados and Trinidad, have come out in support of Guyana against the claims.

The United Nations has committed to send a team to Guyana to assess the situation.

 

The President, whose entry into office has been marred by a crime wave, explained that he decided to address the assembly on the decrees which gave Venezuela rights to patrol in Guyana waters.

Granger yesterday listed this week’s recall of Venezuela’s ambassador and threats to review diplomatic relations.

Recent unofficial maps of Guyana made in Venezuela would show a large part of the maritime zone sited off the Demerara coast in which the US firm ExxonMobil discovered oil earlier in 2015, as belonging to that country.

FISHBONE IN THROAT

“The decree is like a fishbone in our throats. It violates the word and spirit of the 1966 Geneva Agreement that forbids the claiming of new territory while the Agreement remained in force.”

He said that it is established that the Venezuelan government, had no right, either under the Geneva Agreement or in international law, to oppose exploratory activities by ExxonMobil and its subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production (Guyana) Limited in the ‘Stabroek Block.’

“The action taken by the Venezuelan Foreign Minister in February to write to the country manager of Esso Exploration and Production (Guyana) Limited and to object to the dispatch of a rig to proceed with the exploration for petroleum in accordance with the concession granted by the Government of Guyana, therefore, constituted an unnecessary and unlawful interference in Guyana’s sovereign jurisdiction.”

Granger noted Guyana’s sustained efforts to alert the international community of the adverse effects and to seek the repudiation of the Venezuelan unilateral and illegal delineation of maritime territory, not only in relation to the territory of Guyana, but other states in this hemisphere, have come to fruition.

“Guyana has never used aggression against any State. Guyana has always embraced the principle of the peaceful settlement of disputes. But in as much as we are a peace-loving nation, we will not allow our territorial integrity to be threatened or violated. We consider Decree 1.787 as constituting an act of aggression against Guyana.”

He also referred to the 2013 expulsion of an unarmed, seismic survey vessel from Guyana’s exclusive economic zone by a Venezuelan naval corvette, which represents a dangerous and egregious exhibition of gunboat diplomacy.

He noted that Venezuela has relentlessly claimed the entire Essequibo region of Guyana for over 50 years.

“It still insists on referring to the Essequibo in its publications and charts as the zona en reclamación. It still attempts to appropriate the waters off the Essequibo coast in defiance of international law. It still continues its policy of economic blockade of the Essequibo as it has always done.”

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