-as he reminds of role as Principal Interlocutor
Trumpeting that the Argyle Declaration between Guyana and Venezuela that he helped broker is still valid and important, St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, yesterday said that he foresees another meeting to ensure that there isn’t a replication of more aggression.
“We still have to meet to have this matter thrashed out so that we don’t have a replication. This is not the first time since Argyle that matters have had to be mooted by us and I am referred to as the Principal Interlocutor,” Gonsalves said yesterday morning on NBC SVG’s Your Morning Cup with broadcaster Johnny P Straker where he was a guest.
Gonsalves’ views come on the heels of Venezuela’s recent naval incursion in the offshore Stabroek Block and the threat to this country’s oil and gas assets.
The Prime Minister opined that many persons do not take the Argyle Declaration seriously but insisted that it is working. “A lot of persons take the Argyle Declaration for a joke. It has a system for keeping the peace.”
He went on, “…We have this role we are playing. I take the role seriously. If you have a conflagration, a number of people are likely to die, get injured, damage to property, you are going to have migration and when you have migration is not only good people coming; I’m talking refugees . Some real terrible people because we are living in a dangerous neighbourhood,” he added.
The Interlocutor for the Argyle Declaration on the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy, Gonsalves said there needs to be another meeting among the parties to avoid a recurrence of incidents such as Caracas’ military incursion into this country’s Exclusive Economic Zone and communicating with oil sector vessels there.
On December 14, 2023, in Argyle, St Vincent and the Grenadines Guyana, President Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro signed an agreement – The Joint Declaration of Argyle for Dialogue and Peace between Guyana and Venezuela. Since then, Venezuela has engaged in multiple acts of aggression and provocation.
In a briefing note, Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that on March 01, 2025, at approximately 0700 hours, Venezuelan naval vessel, ABV Guaiqueiri PO-11-IMO 469552, sailed approximately 700 metres into Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) near the floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) platform PROSPERITY, which was operating lawfully under a licence issued by the Government of Guyana. The ministry said that the Venezuelan naval vessel communicated “threateningly” via radio communication that FPSO PROSPERITY was operating in Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone, before continuing in a southwestern direction towards other FPSOs, to which it delivered the same message.
Gonsalves related that President Irfaan Ali called him on Saturday morning informing of the incident, but that Georgetown and Caracas had differing views on what happened.
“On that Saturday morning, March 1st, there was a serious problem between Venezuela and Guyana. The report came to us from President Ali of Guyana that a patrol boat from Venezuela had come into Guyana’s waters. That’s what the President said. Venezuela disputes it was Guyana’s waters. They had an interaction with the floating production platforms, and these are undoubtedly under Guyana’s jurisdiction, because that’s the purpose of taking the oil out from the sea bed,” he said.
“And immediately the Argyle Declaration had to be activated because under the Argyle Declaration, Ralph Gonsalves was named in the declaration as the [interlocutor]…,” he added.
Gonsalves disclosed that “all day into the night” calls were “coming in fast and furious” and that he and Prime Minister of Barbados and current CARICOM Chairperson, Mia Mottley, “had to be involved in a tag team all in the night with the various personalities.”
“And you can expect that Guyana had a very different view than Venezuela which was first of all what we had to do was to make sure there is a peace and a calm and ensure there was no provocation,” Gonsalves said.
He said that he knows that President Ali would have been in contact with this country’s different allies and he pointed to the releases from the United States State Department, the OAS, CARICOM and the Commonwealth.
The US, Gonsalves reasoned, would have been actively involved given that ExxonMobil is a company from that country and many of its citizens work onboard the FPSOs offshore. “Naturally, the United States would have been very deeply involved because this is a US company there – Exxon – and there would have been US workers, along with other workers.”
Emphasising that the region has to be one of peace, he said that all persons have to commit to this end.
“You have to have peace. You have to avoid [escalation] anybody in that kind of tense situation, anything could happen. Next thing you know everything spirals out of control and there is a conflagration… You don’t need an imagination to know how that will go,” he said.
