President David Granger is preparing to address the United Nations General Assembly and meet with UN Secretary General António Guterres and his personal representative in the border controversy issue between Guyana and Venezuela, Dag Halvor Nylander on September 25, on the sidelines of the 72nd Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly to be held in New York.
Vice President and Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge told a press conference on Wednesday that President Granger’s address to the UN General Assembly was also expected to send a clear message that Guyana wanted the UN Secretary General to stick to the deadline as regards that issue. “I don’t think there is any reason to expect that we could be requested to extend this time,” he added.
Greenidge recalled that the then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had called for a last effort at dialogue to hopefully resolve the border issue. And while that process should have taken one year, it was now approaching two years since the request was made and the effort was launched. He said, “We are in no position to make this a permanent state. Right now, the Secretary General communication to the two countries is there, it is a process and the process has timelines,” he asserted.
Notwithstanding some of the concerns raised by Guyana, the Foreign Affairs Minister reminded that Guyana embraced the process with the understanding that it would be implemented in good faith by all parties, including the UN. Guyana, he said, has constantly stressed the consequences of the uncertainty and the behaviour of Venezuela with respect to this controversy. For the most part, Greenidge said Venezuela’s behaviour has been mainly aimed at undermining Guyana’s development.
He added that while “Guyana has never had any difficulty speaking to Venezuela as regards attempts and its willingness to resolve the issue of the controversy and we will continue to be accommodating”, the country’s political, economic and social stability depends on the matter being resolved quickly.
Minister Greenidge said he could not state what progress was made towards resolving the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela through the UN Good Officer Process, saying the process did not allow him to. However, the Secretary General had said if by the end of 2017 no significant progress had been made towards arriving at a full agreement, he would choose the International Court of Justice as the next means of settlement, unless both Governments jointly request that he refrain from doing so.
With a territory that is several times bigger than Guyana’s, and a population that is almost 40 times that of Guyana, Venezuela, in 1968, purported to claim the entire territorial sea of Guyana by means of the Leoni Decree, which has never been withdrawn. For decades now, Venezuela has occupied the Guyana side of Ankoko Island, objected to the development of hydropower stations in Essequibo, and has been staunchly opposed to Guyana exploring for oil offshore and onshore its Essequibo territory.
The Venezuelan Navy had, in 2013, intercepted and detained a Malaysian seismic vessel that had been conducting surveys in an offshore concession granted by Guyana to the United States-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, causing that company to leave and never return.
Days after the American oil giant ExxonMobil announced the discovery of oil in commercial quantities offshore Guyana, Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro in a decree announced the purported unilateral extension of his country’s maritime boundary to take in all of the Atlantic sea offshore Essequibo. That sea-space also included several Caribbean island nations and had stretched as far as Suriname and French Guiana.
There have also been incidents inland Guyana, with Venezuelan aircraft attacking vessels operating on the portion of the Cuyuní River that the arbitration court had awarded to Guyana.
Guyana is now seeking relief through one of the options in Article 33 of the United Nations Charter. Those options include arbitration and juridical settlement of the issue.
