The Guyana-Venezuela border controversy
GUYANA'S Caribbean Community (CARICOM) partners and those member nations of the wider Association of Caribbean States (ACS) would be expected to quietly exercise whatever influence possible to avoid any unpleasant development in relations between the governments in Georgetown and Caracas. When, in a recent editorial on "The Chavez Revolution" we urged Washington policy makers to resist viewing Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez as a possible "second Cuba" in the making, we did not expect to return so quickly to the issue of Guyana-Venezuela relations to which we also alluded. But the surprising and, for Guyana, most disturbing statement made by President Chavez just over a week ago about Venezuela's age-old territorial dispute with Guyana makes it necessary to urge that emotionalism does not take the place of sound judgment - on either side. President Chavez, currently enjoying immense popularity with the Venezuelan people as he pursues plans for new congressional and presidential elections before year end, chose the occasion of the 100th anniversary of an award by an international Arbitration Tribunal to revive the issue of his country's claim to approximately two-thirds of Guyana's 83,000 square miles. That arbitral award of October 3, 1899, had determined the demarcation of territorial boundaries between Venezuela and then colonial British Guiana as "a full, perfect and final settlement" to the controversy resulting from Venezuela's claim to most of the Essequibo region, rich in mineral and other natural resources. However, the controversy persisted and amid sabre-rattling from Venezuela and subsequent seizure of a portion of Guyana's Ankoko Island within six months of Guyana's political independence from Britain, new, intense diplomatic initiatives were pursued to avoid military conflict. Trinidad and Tobago was to play a key role when under the guidance of then Prime Minister Eric Williams, with his own sense of history and commitment to peace among neighbours, he helped promote an agreement between the governments of Venezuela and Guyana that was to effectively freeze the territorial dispute for 12 years. That accord came to be known as the June 1970 "Protocol of Port-of-Spain". Other peace initiatives were to follow, rooted in a 1965 Geneva Accord, to which the late President (then Prime Minister) Forbes Burnham was a signatory. The Geneva Accord called for "satisfactory solutions for a practical settlement of the controversy which has arisen as a result of the Venezuelan contention that the 1899 award is null and void". Some may be puzzled by the formulation in the 1965 Geneva Accord seeking "satisfactory solutions for a practical settlement of the controversy" in the context of what the 1899 Arbitration Tribunal Award had resolved as "a full, perfect and final settlement", and which Venezuela had pledged to honour. Nevertheless, as the search for "practical solutions" continued, the good offices of the Secretary General of the United Nations became involved in a new move to keep the dispute within the diplomatic framework. In 1989, the then Presidents of Venezuela, Carlos Andres Perez, and Desmond Hoyte of Guyana, agreed with then UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, to appoint the distinguished Caribbean academic, Alister McIntyre, to function as a mediator in ongoing consideration of the territorial dispute. In the circumstances, it is quite disquieting, to say the least, that President Chavez should have revived, as he did on the 100th anniversary of the 1899 Arbitration Tribunal, Venezuela's claim to the Essequibo region by calling for new negotiations on the dispute. The danger of such a position by the nationalist revolutionary Chavez in the current climate of uncertainty in Venezuela is that it could further contribute to the internal problems of Guyana even as it sends wrong signals to jingoistic elements within the Venezuelan society. We want to believe that good judgment will prevail and that both of these member states of the Caribbean family will still peacefully seek a resolution in the 21st century to an inherited 19th century colonial territorial claim that continues to pose problems for Guyana's economic development.
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