The US position on the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy is “wholly inadequate and inexplicable” and Washington should urgently review its position and acknowledge the validity of the boundary between the two countries, former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran says.
In his column in the Sunday Stabroek, Ramkarran recalled the pivotal role of the US in determining the border. He said that Washington played a dominant role in the 19th century in pressuring Great Britain on behalf of Venezuela to agree to arbitration of the border dispute and like Venezuela, it accepted the Arbitral Award of 1899.
“The US has therefore recognized Guyana’s borders from 1899 to the present, but has pointedly not said so,” Ramkarran said. He pointed out that both Caricom and the Common-wealth have repeatedly affirmed recognition of Guyana’s internationally accepted borders. Com-monwealth foreign ministers, meeting in New York last week, did so again, as did Caricom at its recent heads of government meeting.
“The confirmation of such a position by the US, based on historical facts, would be fair and just. But for some unknown reason, the US has been reticent. It cannot be that a forthright position, based on the facts and international law, which the Venezuelans can hardly dispute, would be seen as taking sides. Neither would it derail its discourse with the Vene-zuelan government, or affect its relations with Latin America, some large countries of which do not support Venezuela’s claim,” he asserted.
Ramkarran recalled that US Charge d’Affaires Bryan Hunt, in defining the US position on the matter on July 9, 2015, limited his comments to the Geneva Agreement and quoted him as saying that “The dispute must be resolved peacefully; both sides should avail themselves to the international legal system that exists and it is our hope that whatever resolution is ultimately arrived at will be in full conformity with international law.”
The Senior Counsel argued that as a result of the US referencing only half the story and omitting mention of the 1899 Arbitral Award, Venezuela’s argument that the current borders are a colonialist imposition can attract sympathy and justify its aggressive behaviour.
“The US’s silence hinders Guyana in representing its case to the wider world because the position that the US takes influences other countries. Yet the US is tip-toeing around Venezuela,” Ramkarran noted.
He recalled that 50 years after the Schomburgk Line showing the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela was drawn in 1844 at the instance of the British, and to which Venezuela objected, the US Congress took action. After intensive lobbying by Venezuela, it passed a resolution in 1895 recommending that Venezuela and the United Kingdom settle the dispute by arbitration. Later that year the US Secretary of State sent a note to the United King-dom supporting Venezuela and invoking the Monroe Doctrine as the basis of its right to intervene.
In December 1895 Pre-sident Cleveland reiterated the US position and argued that the US had a right to resist British aggression against Venezuelan territory. He asked Congress for funds for a commission.
So intense had been the US’s confrontational posture that it almost “plunged the country into a major war” with Great Britain “over nothing,” Ramkarran wrote referencing Daniel Larison (2012). He noted that Great Britain succumbed and signed the Treaty of Washington in 1897, which provided for the arbitration. It eventually resulted in the Arbitral Award of 1899.
Ramkarran related that there were two US judges on the Arbitration Tribunal, namely, Melville Weston Fuller, the Chief Justice of the US and David Josiah Brewer, a Judge of the US Supreme Court. Venezuela selected as counsel Benjamin Harrison, a former US President, Benjamin Tracy, a former secretary of the navy and a former US attorney for the Eastern District of New York and James Soley, a former assistant secretary of the Navy. The junior counsel was Severo Mallet-Prevost, also a US citizen.
“This high-powered US presence, both as members of the tribunal and as legal representatives of Venezuela, gave the US a vested interest in the outcome. While the US was not technically a party to the dispute, it had set itself up as representing Vene-zuela and it accepted the award. The now infamous Memorandum of Severo Mallet-Prevost has receiv-ed no support from the US,” he wrote.
Ramkarran said that in these circumstances the position of the US today is wholly inadequate and inexplicable. “By confining its comments to the provisions of the Geneva Agreement and omitting to validate Guyana’s territorial integrity as having been settled by the Arbitral Award of 1899, the US’s public statements have been a less than adequate representation of what it knows to be the truth of the matter,” the former Speaker declared.
“It is therefore hoped that the US will urgently review its position and acknowledge its own history and involvement in the settlement of the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela and the current validity of that boundary,” he added.
He said that on the basis that the US is a friend of Guyana and had Guyana’s interests at heart, it has deeply influenced political developments from 1960 onwards.
“It was in 1962 at the UN, just after the commencement of US focus on Guyana, that Venezuela first reneged on the Arbitral Award, after having accepted it for sixty-three years. If geopolitical considerations were responsible for the silence of the US in the past, that period is over. The US should once again demonstrate its friendship for Guyana, needed now more than ever, by doing what’s right,” Ramkarran declared.
