Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge yesterday said that while Guyana has lost faith in the UN Good Offices process as it relates to the country’s border controversy with Venezuela, it is willing to give it one last try.
The minister made this statement in the National Assembly as he updated members of last Friday’s decision by outgoing UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon that the Good Offices process on the decades-old border controversy between the two countries will be given one more year and if by the end of 2017 “significant progress” has not been made, the case will move to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Greenidge pointed out that the Good Offices process can only produce mutually satisfactory results if Venezuela co-operates fully to that end.
“As we say in Guyana ‘one hand can’t clap.’ Guyana will co-operate in resolving the controversy that has arisen as a result of Venezuela’s contention that the 1899 Arbitral Award is null and void- the controversy as so defined in the Secretary General’s communication received on Friday December 16th, 2016, and the 1966 Geneva Agreement itself. We hope Venezuela will do likewise. If they do not, we will have readied ourselves for the International Court of Justice,” the minister said.
According to Greenidge, in conveying his decision the Secretary General promised a Good Offices process with a ‘strengthened mandate of mediation’. Greenidge believes that this is a “most significant moment in our relations with Venezuela and that it promises one way or another, the resolution of the controversy with our neighbour.”
He maintained that the ordinary citizens of that country are Guyana’s brothers and sisters, and the country looks forward to working with them as good neighbours in the long years ahead.
It is hoped that with the new decision, the way ahead will follow the path identified and be free of the impediment of aggression, economic and otherwise, that has hindered the process in the past.
The statement from the office of the spokesperson for the Secretary General last week stated that he had worked fervently over the year to find a way forward that would be most conducive to finding a solution. It noted that he had held a trilateral meeting with President David Granger and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in the margins of the 70th General Assembly.
For the last two years, Guyana has been pressing for a judicial settlement of the controversy, arguing that the Good Offices process has yielded no progress in decades, and that Caracas continues to destabilise this country’s progress. Georgetown had argued that for its entire 50 years of independence, Venezuela has used the border controversy to undermine this country’s development.
