Guyana and Venezuela last evening agreed to receive their respective ambassadors with Venezuela also accepting an investigative United Nations team which afterwards will report to the UN Secretary General for a decision on the way forward.
This means that agrément will be granted by Caracas to Guyana’s Ambassador designate Cheryl Miles and Venezuela will send an ambassador to Georgetown. Venezuela’s top diplomat in Guyana, Reina Margarita Arratia Díaz, was recalled by President Nicolás Maduro in July this year.
A press statement from the United Nations last evening said that Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon held a trilateral meeting with President Granger and President Maduro yesterday.
The meeting, said the release, was a follow-up to separate contacts that he had with both Presidents earlier this year with a view to discussing the way forward in relation to the border controversy between Guyana and Venezuela.
The statement went on to say: “The two Presidents expressed willingness to continue to engage in dialogue, and announced during the meeting that they would receive their respective ambassadors in order to ensure a return to fully fledged diplomatic representation in both capitals in the nearest future.”
In an interview with the press shortly after the meeting, President David Granger explained that both countries had laid out their cases.
“I met President Maduro for the first time and both sides had the opportunity to explain their positions. The Venezuelan position is based on the Geneva Agreement. They felt that they were seeking some resoloution to the Geneva Agreement but they avoided the fact hat the matter was resolved, that it was settled finally in 1899. The Venezuelans were unable to provide any evidence that the 1899 award was void, that it was null. On the Guyana side, we felt that the controversy was essentially a legal one and we asked for a legal solution, so the Venezuelans really had no case,” Granger explained.
The President maintained that Guyana was not at fault for the current tensions with her Spanish-speaking neighbour. Said Granger “In addition to that [it was the] Venezuelans which withdrew their Ambassador from Georgetown. It was the Venezuelans which refused to give our nominee for ambassadorship, Ms Cheryl Miles, agrément. It was the Venezuelans which held military manoeuvres, on the border. It was the Venezuelans which promulgated the decree on the 26th May; it was the Venezuelans which sent a naval corvette into our waters so all of the provocation has come from Venezuela,” he said.
The former army general reiterated that there has not been any lack of conversation on Guyana’s part. “Guyana has always been willing to speak… we have arrived at a situation where Venezuela is making a claim, a spurious claim, and it has no evidence to support the claim,” he said.
He thanked the UN Secretary General for facilitating the meeting and cited his roles as a mediator. “We are very grateful to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for facilitating this meeting. We are convinced that under the Geneva Agreement, and under the Charter of United Nations, the Secretary General has specific responsibilities for dealing with this matter…The Secretary General has a menu of measures, which he cited. He knows very well that it has reached a stage at which there has to be a further legal investigation,” he said.
Venezuelan troop reduction
The agreement between the two countries came on the heels of the Guyana government earlier in the day disclosing that there had been a withdrawal of the Venezuelan military gunboat from within its territory and a scaling back of troops in towns close to the border. “The boat in the Cuyuni River has been withdrawn and even the deployment at San Martín has also been withdrawn back into eastern Venezuela, and the level of troop activity which we considered to be unusual has now gone back to what is known as normal,” Minister of State Joseph Harmon told Stabroek News earlier yesterday.
Harmon said that though the military activity of Guyana’s western neighbour has been scaled back to what can be termed normal, Guyana’s army continues to be on alert and vigilant of its terrain. He explained that a seeming removal of troops is also a military strategy used by armies globally and Guyana has taken all of that into its analysis of the situation.
“We are still vigilant and we are looking carefully at every activity on the border. You can never term a withdrawal as a total removal because that is also a military strategy; sometimes in military manoeuvres you retreat to come again,” he stated.
Further, Harmon, who is also the country’s Defence Minister and is acting in the capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the army will continue to guard the country’s border and define if there is aggression so as to promptly inform its diplomatic allies.
“Our best line of defence is to be vigilant, to be able define any act of aggression and to report that information as quickly as we can to our diplomats, who are in this regard, the first line of defence for Guyana,” he said.
Granger meeting with Castro
President David Granger has been using the occasion of the opening of the UN General Assembly to lobby global support for his country’s case and has met among other country’s leaders, President of Cuba Raúl Castro.
Of that meeting he has said that he is convinced that the outcome would be favourable, in terms of the region remaining a zone of peace now that Cuba has been briefed on the territorial threat Guyana faces from Venezuela.
“We took the opportunity to thank the Cuban leader for the support they have given. They have played a very important role in the Caribbean and Africa, as well as a great humanitarian role. We were particularly concerned about the territorial controversy,” Granger was quoted as saying.
He told journalists after the meeting that his government is aware that Cuba is very close to Venezuela and it is for this reason that he would certainly want Cuba to use its influence to help bring a speedy end to the controversy.
Cuba had particularly close relations with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Granger in the statement also emphasized Guyana’s role in support of Cuba. “As you know Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica were instrumental in working for the normalisation of relations with Cuba since the early 1970s. We have a long tradition of friendship. We have many Cuba trained doctors and many points of contact between the two states,” he said.
Contending that Cuba could play a significant role in resolving the border issue between Guyana and Venezuela, President Granger said, “We feel that, to the extent that Cuba decides to get involved, the outcome would be favourable in ensuring that the Caribbean remains a zone of peace.”
In the meantime, the President said that leading up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, he will try to meet with as many Commonwealth states as possible prior to that meeting, which is to be held in Malta in November of this year.
