Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne says the Ar­gyle Agree­ment signed in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines be­tween Guyana and Venezuela on Thurs­day, was a mo­ment for the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty to shine.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s St Clair, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Dr Browne al­so made it clear that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was very in­volved in the dis­cus­sions in Ar­gyle that led to the Joint De­c­la­ra­tion of Ar­gyle for Di­a­logue and Peace Be­tween Guyana and Venezuela.

He said Row­ley was, at var­i­ous times through­out the ses­sions, ei­ther redi­rect­ing the con­ver­sa­tion to the mat­ter at hand or of­fer­ing di­rect com­ment on is­sues raised.

This is in the face of re­peat­ed Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism of the Prime Min­is­ter for fail­ing to lead an at­tempt at me­di­a­tion in the Es­se­qui­bo dis­pute be­tween Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

Browne clas­si­fied Thurs­day’s meet­ing as a “key mo­ment for Cari­com” but ad­mit­ted that even he did not ini­tial­ly pre­dict such an out­come.

“Ex­pec­ta­tions were low, but those ex­pec­ta­tions were ex­ceed­ed, and I would want to cred­it our re­gion­al fam­i­ly, and as I said, in the be­gin­ning, this was a key mo­ment for Cari­com,” Browne said.

As for the struc­ture of the meet­ing, Browne said Cari­com heads first met with­out the ob­servers and with­out Pres­i­dents Ali or Maduro to es­tab­lish the tone for the meet­ing. They then in­vit­ed Pres­i­dent Ali and his del­e­ga­tion in­to the meet­ing and Pres­i­dent Maduro was then in­vit­ed in to talk with the Caribbean heads. It was af­ter these two ses­sions that Ali and Maduro were both in­vit­ed in, and came face-to-face with each oth­er for the first time since the bor­der ten­sions first es­ca­lat­ed.

Browne ac­knowl­edged there was an awk­ward­ness when both men first met, but that soon gave way to a sig­nif­i­cant­ly thawed, if not warm in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the two by the end of the day.

He al­so not­ed that Pres­i­dent Maduro was vo­cal in his ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to Cari­com di­rect­ly about Venezuela’s con­cerns.

How­ev­er, on the is­sue of Maduro’s will­ing­ness to play by the rule­book, Browne would not be drawn in­to com­ment, say­ing he found that the Venezuela leader demon­strat­ed a “de­gree of re­spect for the process”.

Browne not­ed that Guyana-Venezuela con­flict was not solved in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Rather, he de­scribed it as a path­way to fu­ture di­a­logue be­ing es­tab­lished.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the out­come of the meet­ing, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, who lec­tures in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence at UWI, cau­tioned that the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent may be lim­it­ed in his abil­i­ty to ad­here to the agree­ment, es­pe­cial­ly if it does not find favour with the rest of his par­ty ex­ec­u­tive.

“You have a Nico­las Maduro, but you al­so have a Cab­i­net, an Ex­ec­u­tive in Venezuela he may have to rein in if he wants to abide by the rul­ing of the agree­ment,” Ra­goonath said.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the out­come of the meet­ing, Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny E. Bryan, the for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI, St Au­gus­tine, said the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach in the mat­ter was wise.

“Man­ag­ing these mul­ti-faceted is­sues is no sim­ple task for any ad­min­is­tra­tion. Yet, by an­chor­ing T&T’s po­si­tion in uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised prin­ci­ples (UN), align­ment with Cari­com, and con­tin­u­ing to deal with Venezuela, where we have a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship be­cause of prox­im­i­ty, kith and kin, his­to­ry, re­sources, etc., plus sup­port­ing our close cousins the Guyanese...is a tes­ta­ment to our diplo­mat­ic ca­pac­i­ty and a demon­stra­tion of the man­ner in which a small state can deal with com­plex geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues with in­tegri­ty as it walks a diplo­mat­ic, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic tightrope,” Prof. Bryan said.