With Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon’s term coming to an end on December 31st this year, Guyana plans to approach him during next month’s 71st Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly for a progress report on the country’s appeal for a juridical settlement of the border controversy with Venezuela.
“In the margins of the General Assembly, we plan to meet with his office. He will tell us where he is with the process because he had undertaken to do a review of progress and to advise on how he was proposing to move forward and that has to happen before he steps down,” Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge told Stabroek News last Friday.
Relations between Georgetown and Caracas have deteriorated over the last year since embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro issued a decree laying claim to most of Guyana’s Atlantic waters.
The Venezuelan decree had followed closely on the heels of an announcement by US Company ExxonMobil of a significant oil find in Guyana’s waters off the Demerara coast. The Venezuelan decree laid claim to this area.
This sparked a vigorous campaign led by President David Granger to internationalise the issue and up the pressure on Caracas to withdraw the decree. Caracas later withdrew the decree and issued a new one which Guyana still found objectionable.
Subsequently, last September, Granger and Maduro met the UN Secretary-General and agreed to a number of steps.
Guyana has called for a juridical settlement but Venezuela is not in favour of this. Several UN missions have visited Guyana and Venezuela to listen to the two sides and decisions are expected to be made.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs informed that so far there is nothing new to report on the activities of the Secretary-General but that this country looks forward to meeting him, at the next UN General Assembly, which begins on September 13th 2016, to hear how soon a decision on his deliberations will be had.
Granger last Friday also reminded that Guyana will continue to bring local and international awareness to the border controversy until the matter is resolved.
“Guyana’s assessment now is that, after 25 years, the ‘Good Offices Process’ has been exhausted. It is only a fulfillment of the ‘Geneva Agreement’ therefore to seek another peaceful option if one tried option failed to resolve the controversy. Guyana has always acted in accordance with the terms of the ‘Geneva Agreement’. It continues to urge a peaceful and expeditious solution to the controversy arising from Venezuela’s contention that the 1899 Arbitral Award, under which Venezuela was granted over 13,000 km² of territory, was a nullity,” the President said in his address as Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) to the party’s congress, where members of diplomatic community were among those present.
“It was in search of a peaceful solution that I led Guyana’s team to meet the UN Secretary General, first during the Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community in Bridgetown, Barbados in July and, second, during the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September, 2015. Guyana, in its engagements with the UN Secretary General, with the teams that he dispatched to Georgetown and, indeed, with many international leaders emphasized that the ‘Good Offices Process’ failed to resolve the controversy and that the time had come for another peaceful option to be pursued,” he added.
Granger also reminded the international community of Guyana’s expressed confidence in the capacity of the Office of the UN Secretary General, to identify solutions that will validate the ‘just, perfect and final’ nature of the Arbitral Tribunal Award of 1899.
He said that his PNCR will continue to work within the Government to reinforce national security in order to protect the country’s patrimony in the face of threats. “We will continue to support the Government’s efforts to work with the Secretary General of the United Nations to seek a swift juridical solution to the spurious claim of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to our territory. Our government will continue to exercise vigilance over our territory and sea space,” Granger said.
