Ambassador Dag Nylander, the Personal Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) Antonio Guterres on the border controversy between Guyana and Venezuela paid his second visit to Guyana over the period May 5-6, 2017,a release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here said on Saturday.
Nylander met with a team headed by Carl Greenidge, Minister of Foreign Affairs, which included officials and advisers of the Ministry and representative of the Leader of the Opposition, Member of Parliament, Gail Teixeira.
The release said that discussions focused on the mandate of Nylander, a Norwegian, in this final year of the “good offices” process authorised by the Secretary General of the United Nations with a “strengthened mandate of mediation”.
Before demitting office last year, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had outlined in his decision that “if by the end of 2017, the Secretary General concludes that significant progress has not been made toward arriving at a full agreement for the solution of the controversy, he will choose the International Court of Justice as the next means of settlement” unless Guyana and Venezuela “jointly request that he refrain from doing so.”
Guyana has committed its full support to giving this final year of the “good offices” process the best opportunity of success. Guyana has also been arguing for a juridical settlement, noting that years of the Good Offices process has yielded no result and has encouraged Venezuelan aggression.
Last week, Greenidge reported at a press conference on the visit of Britain’s Minister of State, Baroness Anelay and how as a signatory to the 1887 Treaty with Venezuela which led to the 1899 arbitration tribunal ruling, London stood ready to assist Guyana.
Greenidge said that the Baroness had asked, in dialogue with President David Granger and officials here, if there was any way her country could be of assistance, in respect to their pre- independence role in the controversy.
Baroness Anelay was in Guyana, from May 1st to 3rd, as part of a three-country tour, which included Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.
“She did meet with the president …and they discussed a range of things. Issues about Guyana. Mostly about specific bilaterals and of the challenges as regards the controversy over the border, how we may move forward with regards to that,” Greenidge said.
“Whether anything was expected of the United Kingdom, in that regard… So it (Britain) was the principal signatory to that agreement and in that regard, it has a responsibility and a role. So that is why that arose and we spoke a little bit of what might be required,” he added.
The Foreign Affairs Minister noted that when Guyana became independent on May 26th 1966, it then signed the agreement, taking over all foreign relations matters from its colonial ruler.
“You would recall that the (arbitration) award of 1899 (in British Guiana’s favour) was an award that arose from United States pressure on Britain in 1895. It was reflected in a treaty of 1897, the 1897 treaty was signed by the United Kingdom,” he further noted.
Although the Foreign Affairs Minister would not go into details on where the United Nations Secretary General’s representative, Nylander, is with regards to his role, he informed that dialogue continues and that Nylander could be expected often in the country over the next few weeks.
Granger last month met with Nylander along with other officials from the UN.
Guyana has been pressing for a juridical settlement of the controversy with Venezuela that has bedevilled it for decades, thwarting development projects here and characterised by acts of aggression from Caracas. Guyana had also argued that the UN Good Offices process has run for more than two decades without delivering tangible results.
Relations with Venezuela deteriorated sharply in 2015 when Caracas issued a maritime decree intended to claim areas where US company, ExxonMobil had just earlier made a huge oil find.
This resulted in Guyana leading a diplomatic offensive against Caracas in the region for the withdrawal of the maritime decree. Caracas later amended the decree but it remained unacceptable to Guyana.
