Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Trinidad and To­ba­go must be ex­treme­ly care­ful with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, since Maduro and his regime are not trust­wor­thy, Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo warned yes­ter­day.

“Be ex­treme­ly care­ful with the regime—they’re not trust­wor­thy,” Jagdeo added as the over­all mes­sage to T&T.

Jagdeo did so at a me­dia brief­ing in Guyana, where he spoke on height­ened ten­sions be­tween Guyana and Venezuela on the bor­der dis­pute con­cern­ing Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo dis­trict. The brief­ing was car­ried live on Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali’s Face­book page.

Jagdeo spoke against the back­drop of to­day’s emer­gency meet­ing by Cari­com lead­ers on the bor­der is­sue. There is al­so a 3 pm meet­ing on the mat­ter by the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said yes­ter­day that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would be back in time from Lon­don for the Cari­com meet­ing, which is via video con­fer­enc­ing. He said a pub­lic state­ment will be is­sued af­ter­wards. Browne gave no in­for­ma­tion on the meet­ing.

Last Fri­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) ruled that Venezuela should re­frain from tak­ing any ac­tion which would mod­i­fy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion where Guyana ex­er­cis­es con­trol over the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. Cari­com up­held that po­si­tion.

But on Tues­day, Venezuela an­nounced mea­sures to en­force the views of its ref­er­en­dum last Sun­day, back­ing its claim on the Es­se­qui­bo. Mea­sures in­clud­ed re­con­fig­ur­ing Venezuela’s map to in­clude the Es­se­qui­bo, oil and gas ex­plo­ration in the dis­trict and oth­er ini­tia­tives.

Guyana took the is­sue to the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Cari­com, the OAS, Com­mon­wealth and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums and coun­tries.

Yes­ter­day, Jagdeo was asked by a re­porter what key lessons Guyana’s is­sue with Venezuela has for T&T, and what should be tak­en in­to ac­count as a busi­ness part­ner for T&T in the Drag­on Gas project on which T&T’s hopes are pinned.

Jagdeo said, “Maduro and his regime—they’re not trust­wor­thy, they’re not trust­wor­thy and Trinidad would have to be ex­treme­ly cau­tious in en­gag­ing them. They’re not trust­wor­thy.”

Jagdeo said if Maduro pur­sues his “crazy plans” fur­ther and “mis­cal­cu­lates again,” Guyana will be push­ing for sanc­tions again. Jagdeo said he thought Maduro got some re­prieve on that is­sue with T&T be­cause Cari­com want­ed—at T&T’s re­quest—to see the de­vel­op­ment take place.

“So he got that re­prieve there, but it’s not go­ing to be busi­ness as usu­al if he al­lows him­self to be mis­guid­ed again and does any­thing that goes against the ICJ rul­ing,” he said.

On to­day’s Cari­com meet­ing, Jagdeo said Cari­com has been very ex­plic­it in the state­ment that the ICJ is the route that will lead to the de­fin­i­tive set­tle­ment.

“That’s a unan­i­mous po­si­tion.”

He said some Cari­com lead­ers be­lieve Guyana should “en­gage” Venezuela to low­er ten­sions.

“Our gov­ern­ment has made it clear that any en­gage­ment—we’re open to en­gage­ment. How­ev­er, that mat­ter that they were so ex­plic­it on, that is not a sub­ject of the en­gage­ment be­cause we’re not com­pro­mis­ing on that po­si­tion, which is the ICJ route,” Jagdeo said.

“So many Cari­com lead­ers have been giv­en as­sur­ances by Maduro and he’s act­ed con­trary to all of the as­sur­ances he gave many Cari­com lead­ers. They thought Venezuela’s ref­er­en­dum would be the end of the mat­ter. So I guess that will be ex­plored in Cari­com’s meet­ing and we have to make the point that he’s un­trust­wor­thy,” Jagdeo added.

“If he gave many lead­ers around the re­gion his word and then they can’t trust him ... be­cause many of them reached out say­ing that would have been the end of the mat­ter. But we’re vig­i­lant, we kept our guard up as we don’t trust Maduro.”

Jagdeo not­ed the po­si­tion of some lead­ers—in­clud­ing Brazil—for the re­gion to re­main an area of peace. (See page 14)

“Cari­com wants the same. Al­most every Latin Amer­i­can coun­try al­so,” he not­ed

He said he felt Maduro mis­cal­cu­lat­ed that, giv­en what is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine and Pales­tine, enough at­ten­tion will now be paid to his “am­bi­tions” in Guyana.

Jagdeo said the world had to be con­sis­tent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in this hemi­sphere—es­pe­cial­ly the US and oth­er coun­tries that op­posed Rus­sia’s an­nex­a­tion in Ukraine.

He said Guyana has been for­tu­nate in hav­ing a lot of of re­gion­al part­ners in Cari­com and Latin Amer­i­ca who’ve been ro­bust in crit­i­cism of Venezuela but want peace.

Jagdeo said Guyana was pleased the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil took up the mat­ter ur­gent­ly, and the coun­cil will have the ICJ’s full rul­ing and mea­sures, in­clud­ing for Venezuela to re­frain from any step that would al­ter the bor­der.

“We ex­pect the coun­cil to deal with this mat­ter swift­ly,” he added.

He be­lieves every coun­cil mem­ber, in­clud­ing Chi­na and Rus­sia, will sup­port the pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures of the ICJ, which is a UN body.

“We sim­ply want Venezuela to com­ply with the ICJ—that the sta­tus quo not be al­tered un­til the sub­stan­tive is­sue is de­ter­mined, but we’ll work with all our part­ners, in­clud­ing the US, to en­sure that if Venezuela de­fies the ICJ rul­ing and they in­fringe on our ter­ri­to­ry, or try to al­ter the sta­tus quo, then we just have to de­fend our coun­try with our part­ners.”

He said Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro is push­ing against not just in­ter­na­tion­al law, but al­most the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Jagdeo said every sin­gle move­ment Venezuela makes, es­pe­cial­ly on the bor­der, is tracked and any in­cur­sion on Guyana’s ar­eas will be dealt with by its se­cu­ri­ty forces. Jagdeo al­so spoke of yes­ter­day’s US South­ern Com­mand flight over Guyana.

He said any award by Maduro’s com­pa­nies—pro­posed for the Es­se­qui­bo—would be seen as an in­cur­sion on Guyana’s econ­o­my. On Maduro’s mea­sures call­ing for oil com­pa­nies to leave in three months, Jagdeo de­clared, “Just ig­nore Maduro.”

Jagdeo said Guyana was fo­cused on the ICJ and while it was al­ways open to dis­cus­sions with coun­tries, Maduro was mis­tak­en if he felt Guyana would re­turn to the bi­lat­er­al lev­els that would yield a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment.