Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Venezuela, in its bid to an­nex Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, will be fool­ish and mil­i­tar­i­ly reck­less to take on the US and Brazil pow­er­hous­es of North and South Amer­i­ca which sup­port Guyana, says UNC MP Rod­ney Charles.

“Giv­en US and Brazil­ian sup­port for Guyana, Venezuela may be well ad­vised to think care­ful­ly be­fore it con­tem­plates any in­va­sion of Guyana,” Charles, the UNC’s For­eign Af­fairs spokesman, said yes­ter­day.

He did while com­ment­ing on to­mor­row’s pub­lic ref­er­en­dum by Venezuela on the pro­posed an­nex­a­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion - which is two thirds of Guyana. The de­vel­op­ment caps Venezuela’s claim to the area. The ref­er­en­dum calls on Venezue­lans to say if they favour an­nex­a­tion.

How­ev­er, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice yes­ter­day rule in Guyana’s favour in the dis­pute, thus or­der­ing Venezuela to take no ac­tion to es­ca­late the sit­u­a­tion.

T&T sup­ports Cari­com’s po­si­tion that in­ter­na­tion­al law strict­ly pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment of one state from uni­lat­er­al­ly seiz­ing, an­nex­ing or in­cor­po­rat­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of an­oth­er state, and hopes that Venezuela isn’t rais­ing the prospect of us­ing force or mil­i­tary means to get its own way and for the re­gion to re­main a zone of peace. Cari­com al­so hopes Venezuela will en­gage ful­ly in the process be­fore the ICJ on the mat­ter.

Charles said, “While every­one is look­ing at the US in terms of mil­i­tary sup­port for Guyana in its ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute with Venezuela, Brazil’s mil­i­tary back­up is just as cru­cial. Mil­i­tar­i­ly speak­ing, Guyana is no match for Venezuela but Guyana has his­to­ry, in­ter­na­tion­al law, the US and Brazil in its cor­ner.”

He added, “Brazil is by far the biggest pow­er­house in South Amer­i­ca. Its pop­u­la­tion is 216 mil­lion, its econ­o­my $2.1 tril­lion US and its mil­i­tary strength con­sists of 334,500 ac­tive-du­ty troops and of­fi­cers. It shares bor­ders with Guyana, Venezuela, Uruguay, Ar­genti­na, Paraguay, Bo­livia, Pe­ru, Colom­bia, Suri­name, and French Guiana. Bor­der dis­putes on the con­ti­nent are, there­fore, not in Brazil’s na­tion­al in­ter­est.”

Charles said Brazil’s pre­em­i­nent na­tion­al in­ter­est de­mands recog­ni­tion in South Amer­i­ca of the sanc­ti­ty of ex­ist­ing bor­ders.

“The al­ter­na­tive is chaos. So, while the US has sent mil­i­tary ad­vis­ers to George­town, Brazil has al­ready re­port­ed­ly mo­bilised its 1st Jun­gle In­fantry Brigade and de­ployed mul­ti-task­ing ar­moured ve­hi­cles, as well as Leop­ard tanks to in­crease their mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties on its bor­ders with Guyana and Venezuela.”

He added, “I’m al­most cer­tain that the Guyanese gov­ern­ment has en­gaged in high lev­el diplo­mat­ic talks with Brazil on the Venezue­lan is­sue. We may be wit­ness­ing the re­sults of those dis­cus­sions. That is the kind of high lev­el diplo­ma­cy re­quired in the cir­cum­stances, which we may wish to con­sid­er and think about as we de­vel­op our for­eign pol­i­cy.

“Years ago, Er­ic Williams warned about the threat to Guyana, T&T and the Caribbean re­gion due to Venezuela’s im­pe­ri­al­is­tic am­bi­tions. We es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Brazil in 1965 at the same time Dr Williams was alert­ing us to pos­si­ble Venezue­lan im­pe­ri­al­is­tic am­bi­tions.”

Charles said in 1980, while he was em­ployed at Trin­toc, there were en­gi­neers from Brazil’s Petro­bras in Trin­toc’s head­quar­ters in Point Fortin and he was qui­et­ly in­formed that it was part of T&T’s en­gage­ment with Brazil as a counter to any like­ly Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­r­i­al am­bi­tions. Charles not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, at his last news con­fer­ence, ad­mit­ted to be­ing aware of of­fi­cial maps al­so show­ing T&T as part of Venezuela.