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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

PM sides with Guyana in Venezuela dispute

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1637 days ago
20210113
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley hosts his first virtual meeting as Chairman of CARICOM  during the 13th Special Emergency Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley hosts his first virtual meeting as Chairman of CARICOM during the 13th Special Emergency Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government.

OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has re­turned to work and has im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed re­gion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing de­fend­ing Guyana against Venezuela on a land is­sue, as chair­man of Cari­com.

Yes­ter­day was his first day of du­ties fol­low­ing car­diac prob­lems and an­gio­plas­ty over the week­end.

Cari­com un­der his chair­man­ship took is­sue with Venezuela’s po­si­tion against Guyana on a mar­itime bor­der is­sue.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s so­cial­ist ad­min­is­tra­tion has set alarm bells ring­ing by re­ject­ing a re­cent ju­ris­dic­tion­al rul­ing by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) con­cern­ing his coun­try’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims over oil-rich neigh­bour Guyana.

Maduro is­sued a new de­cree last week claim­ing sov­er­eign­ty over ar­eas claimed by Guyana, while Venezuela’s na­tion­al as­sem­bly es­tab­lished a spe­cial com­mit­tee for the de­fence of dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry.

The claim cov­ers more than half of Guyana’s land mass and much of Guyana’s At­lantic mar­itime ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing most of the pro­lif­ic Exxon­Mo­bil-op­er­at­ed Stabroek block, where a raft of huge oil dis­cov­er­ies have been un­earthed in re­cent years.

Guyana’s mod­ern ar­gu­ment for ICJ ju­ris­dic­tion was based on the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment — signed by the UK, Venezuela and colo­nial British Guiana — which stip­u­lates that the par­ties will agree to find a prac­ti­cal, peace­ful and sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tion to the dis­pute.

Guyana has ar­gued, suc­cess­ful­ly, that the Gene­va Agree­ment al­so es­tab­lish­es ju­ris­dic­tion for an ICJ rul­ing, and diplo­mats now ex­pect that rul­ing to come with­in a time­frame of two to four years.

Anx­ious to stave off un­rest in a coun­try where liv­ing stan­dards have plum­met­ed, Maduro has seized on the ju­ris­dic­tion­al rul­ing in an at­tempt to gal­vanise pop­u­lar sup­port.

“It is ours! It be­longs to the Venezue­lans and we are go­ing to re­take it in peace and with na­tion­al uni­ty,” Maduro said of the Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ries.

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali called Maduro’s ac­tions and words “deeply dis­turb­ing” and ar­gued that any at­tempt to “uni­lat­er­al­ly” fix bound­aries be­tween the two coun­tries would be a le­gal nul­li­ty in the eyes of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

The Cari­com state­ment said the com­mu­ni­ty was deeply dis­ap­point­ed and con­cerned “at the de­cree and sub­se­quent state­ments by Venezuela with re­spect to that coun­try’s bor­der con­tro­ver­sy with Guyana, in­clud­ing in­ti­ma­tions of the cre­ation of a strate­gic area of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment called ‘Ter­ri­to­ry for the De­vel­op­ment of the At­lantic Façade’”.

It said Cari­com was “in full sup­port of the ju­di­cial process un­der­way at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) which is in­tend­ed to bring a peace­ful and de­fin­i­tive end to the long-stand­ing con­tro­ver­sy be­tween the two coun­tries.

“CARI­COM re­it­er­ates in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, its firm and unswerv­ing sup­port for the main­te­nance and preser­va­tion of the sov­er­eigni­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of Guyana. CARI­COM firm­ly re­pu­di­ates any acts of ag­gres­sion by Venezuela against Guyana.”

Browne said it was a “strong, very time­ly state­ment of sol­i­dar­i­ty which is ful­ly con­sis­tent with the es­tab­lished Cari­com po­si­tion on how the bor­der dis­pute should be prop­er­ly treat­ed and re­solved at the ICJ.”

“As chair of this spe­cial emer­gency meet­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter led the draft­ing and fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the state­ment as one of his first of­fi­cial func­tions as cur­rent Cari­com chair­man,” Browne added.

Cana­da has al­so ex­pressed con­cern over Venezuela’s claim.

In a state­ment, Ot­tawa said “Venezuela’s re­cent claim that it has sov­er­eign­ty over the area ad­ja­cent to Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo coast is con­cern­ing. The de­ci­sion is in the hands of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice and this ju­di­cial process must be re­spect­ed.”

The Unit­ed States on Sun­day al­so weighed in on the mat­ter. It de­clared sup­port for the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s (ICJ) rul­ing that it has ju­ris­dic­tion to hear Guyana’s case for a ju­ridi­cal set­tle­ment of the long-run­ning bor­der con­tro­ver­sy with Venezuela.

Deal­ing with Venezuela is among sev­er­al is­sues that re­main on Cari­com’s agen­da.

Trinidad and To­ba­go did not vote at a re­cent meet­ing of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) which con­demned the re­cent Venezue­lan elec­tions.

Re­cent­ly Ja­maica’s Op­po­si­tion took its gov­ern­ment to task for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the OAS vote. That Op­po­si­tion called on Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness to ex­plain the break­ing of re­spect­ed tra­di­tions at the OAS Coun­cil.

It was deemed a re­ver­sal of Ja­maica’s long­stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy com­mit­ments which broke Ja­maica’s im­age re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Ja­maica’s Op­po­si­tion stat­ed han­dling of the cir­cum­stances be­tween T&T and Venezuela was dis­turb­ing and Ja­maica, which chaired the OAS Coun­cil, could have han­dled the sit­u­a­tion more re­spon­si­bly.

Their Op­po­si­tion said Ja­maica and two oth­er states, “ir­re­spon­si­bly and in an un­prece­dent­ed” way al­lowed Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers to at­tack T&T’s Gov­ern­ment and oth­er Cari­com states.

Ja­maica’s Op­po­si­tion said their Gov­ern­ment had for­feit­ed Ja­maica’s role as a fair hon­est bro­ker and seemed in­tent on iso­lat­ing re­gion­al sis­ter na­tions which sought al­ter­na­tives to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s agen­da and Venezuela’s cri­sis.


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