Dear Editor,
Your editorial of February 27 headlined ‘More questions than answers arising from Cancún’ comments in part on the unanimous support given by the meeting of Latin American and Caribbean countries to Argentina regarding sovereignty over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands. The editorial states:
“It is therefore even more interesting that Guyana should have been party to a unanimous statement reaffirming Argentina’s ‘legitimate rights,’ a term that rather suggests pre-judgment of a complex historical and legal territorial dispute. More pertinently, we would do well to recall, notwithstanding whatever anti-imperial sentiments that might exist, that during the 1982 Falklands War, Guyana refused to support the aggressor, Argentina, and supported UK arguments based on the principles of non-intervention and the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes. The implications then for our own border controversy with Venezuela were very clear.”
It is true that Guyana under the Burnham administration was among the first to express support for the UK when Argentina on April 2, 1982 invaded the Falkland Islands. The statement issued by the government on that same day called for “an urgent return to diplomatic dialogue for the peaceful settlement of any issues,” and said it recognized the full right of the people of the Falklands to self-determination as well as to the integrity of their territory.
The PPP, then forming the opposition, expressed an opposite view, pointing out that Argentina had sovereign rights over the islands. In a statement the party issued in May 1982, it explained that Venezuela’s claims to Guyana’s territory and Argentina’s claim to the Falklands were separate and distinct questions in the sense that the Falkland Islands, a distinct part of Argentina, were seized by the British from Argentina in the 1830s; while in the case of Guyana, an international tribunal, with the agreement of the Venezuelan government and the British government, then speaking for Guyana, decided on the boundary. The party pointed out that the Venezuelan government accepted this as a final settlement at the time. On the other hand, the Argentina government never surrendered its sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.
But the position of the Guyana government in those days was ambiguous. This ambiguity was revealed three years later when Burnham made an about-face on March 1, 1985, making a statement that contradicted his government’s position in 1982, during an interview with by Alfredo Peña, a senior journalist of the Venezuelan newspaper, El Nacional. The interview was published in El Nacional on March 4, 1985.
The relevant part of that interview, according to the transcript, issued by the Guyana government then, stated:
Peña: “You, being the President of a country, which until recently was a colony, and is in some way, part of the family of the Third World, why didn’t you support Argentina in an act of sovereignty in trying to recuperate a part of its territory which had been taken from it by British imperialism?”
Burnham: “In Lima, Peru, I think it was in 1975, at a meeting of Non-Aligned Foreign Ministers, we supported the right of ownership that Argentina had to the Falkland Islands. And that position, we have retained. When the war between Britain and Argentina took place two years ago, our position was that we opposed Argentina’s using force. That is all. Subsequently, when the matter came up for discussion in the United Nations General Assembly, Britain was flabbergasted to find that we were on the side of Argentina’s right. You must distinguish between the right and attempts to exercise that right by force.”
Peña: “But Argentina for more than a hundred years had requested in every way possible, by the use of all means possible, and England, with great disdain, and with colonial arrogance, did not see it fit to sit down at the discussion table.”
Burnham: “I understand what you are saying. But we adhere to the principle that force should not be used in the settlement of disputes. And in the peculiar circumstances, Guyana must always adhere to that.”
(Reference: http://www.guyana.org/features/trail_diplomacy_pt9.html)
Yours faithfully,
Daren David