Pres­i­dent Dr. Ir­faan Ali, Thurs­day re­it­er­at­ed Guyana’s po­si­tion re­gard­ing the own­er­ship of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion that is be­ing claimed by Venezuela.

A Guyana gov­ern­ment state­ment said Ali out­lined the po­si­tion to Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers who are here to par­tic­i­pate in the talks be­tween Ali and Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro.

The talks are be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ty of States of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CELAC) and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM).

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, Ali briefed his re­gion­al col­leagues that in­clud­ed CARI­COM chair­man and Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and her coun­ter­parts from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Grena­da and St. Lu­cia.

“Pres­i­dent Ali met with a num­ber of CARI­COM heads where he made a pre­sen­ta­tion re­it­er­at­ing our fun­da­men­tal po­si­tion in ac­cept­ing the in­vi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in the en­gage­ment i.e. that the bor­der con­tro­ver­sy with which the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice is not up for dis­cus­sion, ne­go­ti­a­tion or de­lib­er­a­tion."

“Guyana’s po­si­tion is and will re­main that the con­tro­ver­sy must be re­solved at and by the ICJ. Pres­i­dent Ali re­mind­ed CARI­COM that the re­fer­ral of this mat­ter to the ICJ is con­sis­tent with and pur­suant to the Gene­va Agree­ment,” the state­ment said.

It said that Pres­i­dent Ali fur­ther re­it­er­at­ed “em­phat­i­cal­ly that Guyana’s on­ly in­ten­tion is to pur­sue a course that will se­cure and en­sure peace and sta­bil­i­ty in our re­gion and re­spect for Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty ."

“Pres­i­dent Ali al­so not­ed the con­sis­ten­cy of CARI­COM’s po­si­tion that all par­ties must abide by In­ter­na­tion­al Law, re­spect the out­come of the ICJ process and de­sist from the threat/ or use of force.”

The state­ment said Ali made it clear to CARI­COM lead­ers “that mat­ters con­se­quen­tial have noth­ing to do with the ICJ case or mat­ters con­nect­ed there­with”.

The state­ment said that dur­ing the sec­ond phase of the de­lib­er­a­tions here, “Pres­i­dent Ali and Pres­i­dent Maduro will meet across the ta­ble with CARI­COM, CELAC, Brazil and UN ob­servers”.

Last Sun­day, Venezuela staged a ref­er­en­dum in which it said 95 per cent of the votes cast were in sup­port of the an­nex­a­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion and Pres­i­dent Maduro an­nounced soon af­ter­wards that for­eign com­pa­nies work­ing in Es­se­qui­bo would have to with­draw with­in three months.

He said he was al­so propos­ing a spe­cial law to pro­hib­it all com­pa­nies that work un­der Guyana con­ces­sions from any trans­ac­tion and that Cara­cas would be cre­at­ing a mil­i­tary unit for the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry but that it would be based in a neigh­bour­ing Venezue­lan state.

Pri­or to the ref­er­en­dum, the ICJ had ruled that Venezuela must not take any ac­tion to seize Es­se­qui­bo, which has been ad­min­is­tered by Guyana for more than a cen­tu­ry.

In its rul­ing, the Court said “both par­ties shall re­frain from any ac­tion which might ag­gra­vate or ex­tend the dis­pute be­fore the court or make it more dif­fi­cult to re­solve.

“The court em­pha­sizes that the ques­tion of the va­lid­i­ty of the 1899 Award and the re­lat­ed ques­tion of the de­fin­i­tive set­tle­ment of the land bound­ary dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela are mat­ters for the court to de­cide at the mer­its stage,” it added.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Dec 13, CMC – 

CMC/kc/ir/2023