Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Stop the con­flict and talk! That, in a nut­shell, is the man­date from Cari­com which firm­ly sup­ports Guyana and has called for a de-es­ca­la­tion of the cur­rent con­flict be­tween Venezuela and Guyana and ap­pro­pri­ate di­a­logue be­tween the lead­ers of both coun­tries.

Cari­com is­sued a state­ment to this ef­fect last Fri­day night af­ter its emer­gency meet­ing (via video con­fer­enc­ing) with lead­ers on the height­ened ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and Guyana on their bor­der con­flict.

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali con­firmed that he spent three hours in the Cari­com cau­cus with lead­ers to up­date and dis­cuss the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion on the Venezuela-Guyana con­tro­ver­sy. He al­so not­ed Cari­com’s state­ment on his Face­book site.

This is af­ter Venezuela on Tues­day an­nounced mea­sures to en­force last Sun­day’s ref­er­en­dum where Venezue­lan vot­ers who turned out large­ly sanc­tioned the Venezue­lan Maduro Gov­ern­ment’s claim of Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo area. That is more than two-thirds of Guyana. The ref­er­en­dum turnout was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 per cent.

Venezuela’s ref­er­en­dum and mea­sures arose de­spite the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s pre­vi­ous rul­ing that Venezuela re­frains from ac­tion which would mod­i­fy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion where Guyana ex­er­cis­es con­trol over Es­se­qui­bo. Cari­com up­held this. But Venezuela re­ject­ed the ICJ rul­ing–which was re­in­forced in its ref­er­en­dum–and slammed Cari­com’s sup­port of the rul­ing.

Af­ter last Fri­day’s meet­ing, Cari­com lead­ers’ state­ment said, “Cari­com firm­ly sup­ports Guyana in pur­suance of the res­o­lu­tion of its bor­der con­tro­ver­sy with Venezuela through the process of the ICJ. Fur­ther, Cari­com urges Venezuela to re­spect the con­ser­va­to­ry mea­sures de­ter­mined by the ICJ in its re­cent rul­ing un­til a fi­nal res­o­lu­tion.

“Cari­com re­it­er­ates its com­mit­ment to the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace and the main­te­nance of in­ter­na­tion­al law. Ac­cord­ing­ly, Cari­com calls for a de-es­ca­la­tion of the con­flict and for ap­pro­pri­ate di­a­logue be­tween the lead­ers of Venezuela and Guyana to en­sure peace­ful co­ex­is­tence, the ap­pli­ca­tion and re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law and the avoid­ance of the use or threats of force.”

Last Thurs­day (be­fore the meet­ing), Guyana Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo not­ed some Cari­com lead­ers’ views that Guyana should “en­gage” to low­er ten­sions. He had added Guyana was open to en­gage­ment but the mat­ter they were so ex­plic­it on, is not a sub­ject for en­gage­ment as Guyana was not com­pro­mis­ing on that po­si­tion, which was the ICJ route. He stressed Guyana wants Venezuela to com­ply with the ICJ’s rul­ing and that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro was un­trust­wor­thy, which would have been con­veyed to lead­ers at the Cari­com cau­cus.

Cari­com’s state­ment was is­sued as the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil al­so met last Fri­day on the bor­der dis­pute. Guyana brought the mat­ter of Venezuela’s ac­tion to the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al in a De­cem­ber 6 let­ter. The ICJ is an or­gan of the UN.

Ecuador sched­uled the meet­ing af­ter the re­quest by Guyana, an in­com­ing UN­SC mem­ber from Jan­u­ary.

The “Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil Re­port” web­site pro­ject­ed Coun­cil mem­bers were like­ly to urge a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute and ex­press con­cern about its pos­si­ble ram­i­fi­ca­tions on the re­gion. Coun­cil mem­bers were al­so ex­pect­ed to urge re­spect for mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism and ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al law and ex­press sup­port for the ICJ. The SCR pro­ject­ed that while some mem­bers–US and Eu­ro­pean–were like­ly to re­gret Venezuela’s ac­tions, oth­ers were not ex­pect­ed to specif­i­cal­ly de­nounce Venezuela’s role in the sit­u­a­tion.

The SCR stat­ed the Coun­cil con­sul­ta­tions are a closed in­for­mal meet­ing for­mat that does not al­low for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of non-Coun­cil mem­bers whose in­ter­ests are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed. But in­com­ing Coun­cil mem­bers are al­lowed to ob­serve Coun­cil pro­ceed­ings in closed-door ses­sions. There­fore, Guyana was able to ob­serve last Fri­day’s meet­ing while Venezuela would not have been able to par­tic­i­pate.

There has been no re­sponse from the Venezue­lan side to Jagdeo’s warn­ing to T&T on Thurs­day that the Maduro regime is not trust­wor­thy, or to T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley’s com­ments on the mat­ter last Fri­day.