Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves made it clear yes­ter­day that he was fa­cil­i­tat­ing di­a­logue be­tween Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali and Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro and would not be tak­ing on the role of me­di­a­tor in the dis­cus­sions sched­uled for Thurs­day.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s Week­end News, Gon­salves said the aim was for the two lead­ers to have “re­spect­ful” di­a­logue on the Es­se­qui­bo bor­der is­sue.

Not­ing that for peace and se­cu­ri­ty, it was vi­tal for lead­ers in con­flict to be en­gaged in di­a­logue, Gon­salves re­it­er­at­ed that it was bet­ter for peo­ple in con­flict to be talk­ing.

It was a view he al­so ex­pressed dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, where he said, “It is very easy in a mat­ter like this for per­sons to vent ... but that does not aid a so­lu­tion. The fact of the mat­ter is, our re­gion has been and is a zone of peace and we would like to keep it like this. If opened to con­flict ... the im­pli­ca­tions are hor­ren­dous”

Gon­salves said any dis­rup­tion with­in the zone of peace would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect every­one in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

“Many things need to be ad­dressed and the mat­ter of the com­mit­ment to in­ter­na­tion­al law, the com­mit­ment to main­tain the re­gion as a zone of peace and not to go to open con­flict, all are of great im­por­tance and I’m sure when lead­ers sit down, they will search for modal­i­ties to main­tain the peace,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ali told re­porters in Guyana that while that coun­try was com­mit­ted to in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty and the pro­mo­tion of good neigh­bourly re­la­tions, the coun­try would strict­ly ad­here to the process of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) in the res­o­lu­tion of the bor­der con­tro­ver­sy.

“The ICJ will de­ter­mine, fi­nal­ly, the con­tro­ver­sy in the Guyana/Venezuela bor­ders,” Ali said.

“We are un­com­pro­mis­ing on this and the re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law. We have made it clear we are un­op­posed to con­ver­sa­tions and meet­ings as a re­spon­si­ble peo­ple and coun­try.”

In the state­ment over the week­end, Ali vowed to con­tin­ue en­gag­ing Guyana’s bi­lat­er­al part­ners on de­fence co­op­er­a­tion works, as well as the on-go­ing range of po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic arrange­ments.

“Guyana is clear that the ad­vance­ment of our de­vel­op­ment agen­da will not be com­pro­mised. Our de­vel­op­ment part­ners and in­vestors can be as­sured that there will be no changes nor al­ter­ations to ex­ist­ing arrange­ments,” he said.

Venezuela’s For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil, in a so­cial me­dia post, thanked CELAC and Cari­com for their ef­forts in pro­mot­ing high-lev­el di­a­logue be­tween the pres­i­dents of Guyana and Venezuela.

“We are ful­ly cer­tain that the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy will on­ly be re­solved through di­a­logue,” he said in a re­port car­ried in Venezuela’s na­tion­al news­pa­per, El Uni­ver­sal.

Gil said he held talks with his Guyana coun­ter­part, Hugh Todd, and “we ex­pressed ours, al­ways in favour of di­a­logue be­tween both coun­tries to solve that con­tro­ver­sy.”