Bilateral negotiations
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 11, 2007
Not quite everything associated with the Rio summit was good news, although one of the items of not-so-good news had nothing to do with the government. It came in the form of a statement made at the press conference held by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro who, it must be said, did the local press the courtesy of bringing an interpreter so there could be some interchange between him and the English-speaking media. The impression gleaned from that interchange was that the Venezuelan government might be tending to the view that a bilateral approach was the preferred modus operandi for addressing the border controversy.
The controversy has been in the hands of the UN Secretary-General for many years as provided for under the Geneva Agreement, and the current means of settlement under Article 33 of the UN Charter selected by him and agreed to by both Venezuela and Guyana is the Good Officer process. At the moment that process is stalled because the Good Officer, who was the Barbadian Oliver Jackman, died in January. According to Guyana's Ambassador to Venezuela, Dr Odeen Ishmael, the "Venezuelan side has so far not commented on a replacement." Whether the delay is a reflection of unease in Caracas about searching for a solution under multilateral auspices is simply not clear at the moment.
Assuming that moving away from the UN Good Offices context is what Minister Maduro is advocating, it should be observed that we have been down this road before over the last twelve years. The first occasion was when then Venezuelan Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Burelli Rivas was here on a two-day visit in March 1995. That time the bilateral package came wrapped in a "globality" proposal, with an apparent link between a resolution of the border controversy and increased co-operation, particularly in the economic field. The Venezuelan ambassador in Georgetown was later at pains to insist that this proposal was not intended to supersede the Good Officer process, although no one on this side of the western frontier was really persuaded. At a press conference on May 5, 1995, then Foreign Minister Rohee rejected bilateral negotiations, and said the government believed the search for a solution to the controversy should continue under the auspices of the Good Officer.
But that was not the end of it. Three years later Mr Hugo Chávez, who was President-elect at the time, was reported to be pushing for direct negotiations with Guyana on the border. On that occasion again, Minister Rohee indicated that this country was not amenable to this. "We don't want to go on a bilateral basis because it would mean saying no to the involvement of the UN and in a sense signalling the failure of the UN to solve this thing. We haven't reached that stage as yet," he was reported as saying. He added that he didn't know if we would ever reach that stage.
If it is that Miraflores is reverting to attempting to foist bilateral negotiations on this country, then the government should reject the overture once again. As was recognized in 1995 and again in 1998, it is simply not in Guyana's interest to move out from under the umbrella of the United Nations and leave ourselves with no cover as to the rules of engagement. In an article by Mr Cedric Joseph which was published in this newspaper in June 1995, it was observed, among many other things, that the Geneva Agreement was still the only "legal and international document on the table detailing the means to a peaceful solution of the controversy." To remove the issue from the current framework would entail first, he said, an acknowledgement that the Good Officer process had not led to a solution of the controversy, following which the "UN Secretary-General, after the appropriate consultation… [would have to] choose another of the means of settlement as stipulated in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations."
President Chávez is an impatient man, of course, and likes quick results. But there are no quick results other than a withdrawal of the claim on the part of Venezuela, which one imagines is not about to happen in the immediate future. In the meantime, one hopes that Guyana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs will reiterate this country's traditional position for the benefit of their Venezuelan counterparts.