Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ralph Gon­salves Wednes­day said he re­mains “very, very hope­ful” that the talks be­tween Venezuela and Guyana would con­tin­ue in a very good spir­it even as the Unit­ed King­dom an­nounced it was send­ing a Roy­al Navy pa­trol ship, HMS Trent, to Guyana in a show of British sup­port for the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try that is in­volved in a bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela.

Gon­salves, speak­ing on the state-owned NBC Ra­dio, said the HMS Trent is no stranger to the re­gion, and that “it comes here some­times to deal with help­ing to in­ter­dict drugs, deal with traf­fick­ing in per­sons, search and res­cue. It has very lim­it­ed, as I un­der­stand, it very lim­it­ed mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty”.

A Min­istry of De­fence spokesper­son said “HMS Trent will vis­it re­gion­al al­ly and Com­mon­wealth part­ner Guyana lat­er this month as part of a se­ries of en­gage­ments in the re­gion dur­ing her At­lantic pa­trol task de­ploy­ment”.

The off­shore pa­trol ves­sel HMS Trent was due in Bar­ba­dos over Christ­mas and will then head to Guyana for ac­tiv­i­ties which will be car­ried out at sea. The ship is not ex­pect­ed to dock in George­town.

Ear­li­er this month, the For­eign Of­fice Min­is­ter for the Amer­i­c­as and Caribbean, David Rut­ley, vis­it­ed Guyana and lat­er said “the bor­der is­sue has been set­tled for over 120 years,” adding “sov­er­eign bor­ders must be re­spect­ed wher­ev­er they are in the world”.

But Venezuela’s De­fense Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no Lopez has ac­cused the Unit­ed King­dom of provo­ca­tion.

“A war­ship in wa­ters to be de­lim­it­ed? And then? What about the com­mit­ment to good neigh­bor­li­ness and peace­ful co­ex­is­tence?”

Lopez said Venezuela will re­main vig­i­lant against the “provo­ca­tions that jeop­ar­dize the peace and sta­bil­i­ty of the Caribbean and our Amer­i­ca”.

Guyana and Venezuela are both claim­ing own­er­ship of the Es­se­qui­bo coun­ty which makes up about two-thirds of Guyana and is home to 125,000 of the coun­try’s 800,000 cit­i­zens.

On De­cem­ber 3, Venezuela staged a ref­er­en­dum in which it said 95 per cent of the votes cast were in sup­port of the an­nex­a­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion and Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro an­nounced soon af­ter­wards that for­eign com­pa­nies work­ing in Es­se­qui­bo would have to with­draw with­in three months.

He said he was al­so propos­ing a spe­cial law to pro­hib­it all com­pa­nies that work un­der Guyana con­ces­sions from any trans­ac­tion and that Cara­cas would be cre­at­ing a mil­i­tary unit for the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry but that it would be based in a neigh­bor­ing Venezue­lan state.

Pri­or to the ref­er­en­dum, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) had ruled that Venezuela must not take any ac­tion to seize Es­se­qui­bo, which has been ad­min­is­tered by Guyana for more than a cen­tu­ry.

The Joint De­c­la­ra­tion of Ar­gyle for Di­a­logue and Peace be­tween Guyana and Venezuela, is­sued fol­low­ing talks here ear­li­er this month be­tween Pres­i­dent Dr. Ir­faan Ali and Pres­i­dent Maduro, al­so in­di­cat­ed that the two coun­tries agreed that “any con­tro­ver­sies” be­tween them will be re­solved in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law, in­clud­ing the Gene­va Agree­ment dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 17, 1966”

Prime Min­is­ter Gon­salves told ra­dio lis­ten­ers that he had read the Venezue­lan state­ment very care­ful­ly and that they have con­sid­ered this an act of provo­ca­tion.

“They didn’t say that that was a threat. But what they said was a threat is that tak­en in con­junc­tion with ac­tiv­i­ties with the US South­ern Com­mand, that it ap­pears that that con­joined rep­re­sent a threat of force,” Gon­salves said, not­ing “the state­ment was not par­tic­u­lar­ly bel­liger­ent, and I think we will have things like this over the pe­ri­od”.

Gon­salves said that as an in­ter­locu­tor he has been in touch with both Pres­i­dents Ali and Maduro “with as­sur­ances giv­en on ei­ther side of com­mit­ment to peace and con­tin­ued di­a­logue and the like.

“So I don’t want to ex­press an opin­ion on it. Ex­cept to say that the mat­ter con­cern­ing the US South­ern Com­mand when they do, they’ve done Tradewinds ex­er­cis­es in St. Vin­cent and in oth­er coun­tries too, lim­it­ed kind of ex­er­cis­es.

“But Venezuela will nat­u­ral­ly be con­cerned. But Guyana has trans­mit­ted through me, to them to in­di­cate that these are not ex­er­cis­es, they are not threat­en­ing ex­er­cis­es.”

Gon­salves said that while Venezuela may have a dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tion, they “have re­spond­ed with a state­ment firm­ly.

“I don’t know how to be tak­en in Guyana, but I don’t think the state­ment was a bel­liger­ent one. I think it was mea­sured and I think both sides are ma­ture enough to con­tin­ue the di­a­logue and the quest for peace.

“What I’m hop­ing for is that there would be few­er acts which may be open to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of provo­ca­tion or threat. That’s how I for­mu­late it . All right. But I’m not ex­press­ing a view be­cause I’ve been asked to con­tin­ue the role, and I will con­tin­ue it.”

Gon­salves said that he would con­tin­ue to be mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion over the Christ­mas hol­i­days telling ra­dio lis­ten­ers the meet­ing here be­tween Pres­i­dents Ali and Maduro on the bor­der is­sue “was his­toric, and it’s hold­ing.

“And I’m very, very hope­ful of its con­tin­u­a­tion in that spir­it,” he added.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Dec 27, CMC