RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As Venezuela pre­pares to hold a ref­er­en­dum to­day on the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ry, for­mer head of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, says war is pos­si­ble be­tween the two neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Venezuela is seek­ing a ref­er­en­dum from its cit­i­zens to claim the Es­se­qui­bo, an oil-rich ter­ri­to­ry that is part of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana.

On Fri­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) or­dered Venezuela not to take any ac­tion to chal­lenge, dis­rupt or in­ter­fere with Guyana’s long-stand­ing con­trol and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion which makes up two-thirds of Guyana.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia about the lat­est de­vel­op­ments, Dr Gon­za­les said, “One can­not rule out war. War is a pos­si­bil­i­ty. The mere fact that Venezuela is go­ing to its pop­u­la­tion and ask­ing the pop­u­la­tion to make a de­ci­sion and to say whether it is in favour of an­nex­ing the ter­ri­to­ry en­hances the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a war tak­ing place.

“I am sure over 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in Venezuela will go in favour of an­nex­ing Es­se­qui­bo.”

Dr Gon­za­les said Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro was gear­ing up for the elec­tion next year.

“That ap­peal to na­tion­al­ism is a bit fright­en­ing, so I think we have to be con­cerned,” Dr Gon­za­les said.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al forces were work­ing to stop any war.

“Amer­i­cans and Brazil­ians are tak­ing a po­si­tion against a set­tle­ment by vi­o­lence and war. There is diplo­ma­cy go­ing on to find some al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tion so there is still a lot of hope. None of us knows where this is go­ing. We have to guide it,” Dr Gon­za­les said.

Asked what prac­ti­cal ad­vice he could give to cit­i­zens at this time, Dr Gon­za­les said, “Mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion care­ful­ly and see how it evolves. Af­ter the ref­er­en­dum, we do not know what Venezuela is like­ly to do. We have to wait and see.”

He added, “If you are in Guyana you have to pre­pare for all even­tu­al­i­ties. They are very con­cerned about war break­ing out and they have to take mea­sures to de­ter that. The rest of the Caribbean is not in that sit­u­a­tion and we have to see if there could be some oth­er so­lu­tion.”

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador: We do not recog­nise ICJ

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia reached out to Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero for a com­ment. He shared cor­re­spon­dence out­lin­ing Venezuela’s stance in the land dis­pute.

In a state­ment re­leased on Fri­day, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment de­clared that “Venezuela’s Sun ris­es on the Es­se­qui­bo.”

Say­ing it had tak­en note of the pro­nounce­ment is­sued by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment said it “does not recog­nise the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice to set­tle the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy over the Guyana Es­se­qui­bo, es­pe­cial­ly in view of the ex­is­tence of the Gene­va Agree­ment of 1966”.

The 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment states that in case Venezuela and Guyana fail to re­solve the bor­der dis­pute peace­ful­ly, “they shall re­fer the de­ci­sion as to the means of set­tle­ment to an ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan up­on which they both agree or, fail­ing agree­ment on this point, to the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions”.

Al­though Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment said it does not recog­nise the ju­ris­dic­tion of the ICJ, it ex­pressed vic­to­ry that the ICJ did not stop the planned ref­er­en­dum.

“Noth­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al law al­lowed the Court to in­ter­fere in Venezuela’s in­ter­nal af­fairs, nor to pre­tend to pro­hib­it or mod­i­fy a sov­er­eign act or­gan­ised with­in the frame­work of its par­tic­i­pa­to­ry po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and based on its Con­sti­tu­tion,” the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment stat­ed.

It al­so not­ed, “Like­wise, with this de­ci­sion, it has demon­strat­ed that Guyana is not a vic­tim, has no ti­tle over the ter­ri­to­ry in dis­pute, is a de fac­to oc­cu­pi­er and has re­peat­ed­ly vi­o­lat­ed the Gene­va Agree­ment.”

Fur­ther­more, Venezuela al­so ac­cused Guyana of vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal­i­ty by grant­i­ng con­ces­sions and fa­cil­i­tat­ing mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry.

“Guyana had vi­o­lat­ed the Gene­va Agree­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal­i­ty by uni­lat­er­al­ly grant­i­ng con­ces­sions in the land ter­ri­to­ry and the wa­ters pend­ing de­lim­i­ta­tion, as well as fa­cil­i­tat­ed its ter­ri­to­ry for the mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in our re­gion of the main war­mon­ger­ing pow­er in the plan­et.”

Un­der its sa­cred Con­sti­tu­tion, Venezuela said it would con­tin­ue with its ref­er­en­dum.

“Noth­ing and no one will pre­vent the Venezue­lan peo­ple from ex­press­ing them­selves freely on De­cem­ber 3 on a mat­ter that be­longs to it, is in­ter­nal and of enor­mous tran­scen­dence, such as its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty,” Venezuela said.

It stat­ed that Venezuela would de­fend in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal­i­ty and the Gene­va Agree­ment to reach a prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion through “friend­ly, po­lit­i­cal and peace­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions”.

Cari­com has thrown sup­port be­hind the ICJ in­sist­ing that Venezuela com­plies with in­ter­na­tion­al law in all re­spects, and the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, and called on the Maduro regime to take no ac­tions in vi­o­la­tion of them.

Cari­com said the Venezuela-Guyana con­tro­ver­sy was prop­er­ly be­fore the ICJ by the de­ci­sion of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions for “fi­nal set­tle­ment” and de­mand­ed that Venezuela pur­sues its claims with­in the law and that le­gal process.

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali has al­so said the ICJ rul­ing was legal­ly bind­ing on Venezuela re­gard­less of the out­come of Venezuela’s ref­er­en­dum to­day.

Guyana will de­fend it­self

Vice Pres­i­dent of Guyana Dr Bhar­rat Jagdeo, mean­while, told Guyana’s News Room yes­ter­day that Guyana will de­fend it­self “by any means what­so­ev­er” if Venezuela ig­nores the rul­ing of the World Court and tries to seize con­trol of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing de­fence co­op­er­a­tion with sev­er­al for­eign pow­ers.

“If they act in con­tra­ven­tion of the rul­ing of the Court and have ag­gres­sive in­tent on our coun­try, all op­tions are on the ta­ble for the de­fence of our coun­try,” Jagdeo told the News Room.

“We are ex­plor­ing de­fence co­op­er­a­tion with sev­er­al coun­tries. And we’re not a bel­liger­ent coun­try, but if any coun­try, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Venezuela, thinks they can al­ter the bound­ary es­tab­lished by the 1899 tri­bunal, uni­lat­er­al­ly, then we’d de­fend our coun­try by any means what­so­ev­er,” Jagdeo said.

Jagdeo hailed the rul­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) as “a great vic­to­ry” for Guyana.

Jagdeo told News Room that Guyana is not both­ered about that, see­ing it as an “in­ter­nal mat­ter” and part of the play­book of the Venezue­lan lead­er­ship to bol­ster its chances at next year’s elec­tions there, but what is im­por­tant is that Venezuela can­not use the ref­er­en­dum as a li­cence to in­vade Es­se­qui­bo.

“… The op­er­a­tive part of the rul­ing ex­plic­it­ly–the unan­i­mous rul­ing of the ICJ–is that they have to recog­nise the ex­ist­ing bor­ders and they can­not take any ac­tion to al­ter those bor­ders,” Jagdeo told the News Room.

He point­ed out that Guyana has ro­bust­ly pur­sued the le­gal route on the con­tro­ver­sy and has so far won. He said, too, that Guyana has pur­sued the diplo­mat­ic route and has re­ceived “over­whelm­ing” sup­port from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

And now, he said, the coun­try is seek­ing de­fence co­op­er­a­tion with its al­lies.

“The court made a very im­por­tant rul­ing–that Venezuela has to re­frain from tak­ing any ac­tion that will af­fect the ter­ri­to­ry giv­en to Guyana by virtue of the 1899 award–that is all we want­ed.

“We were fear­ful that they would have utilised the ref­er­en­dum to then jus­ti­fy ag­gres­sive ac­tions against Guyana, pos­si­bly in­vade our ter­ri­to­ry. The Court has made it clear they can­not do that. So, this is a great rul­ing for Guyana, we’re ex­treme­ly pleased with it,” Jagdeo stat­ed.

Venezuela has vowed not to ac­cept the rul­ing of the Court and, in fact, one of the ques­tions in its ref­er­en­dum to­day is to seek a re­jec­tion of the Court in han­dling the case.

Jagdeo not­ed that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is on Guyana’s side, and “… whether they ac­cept it or not, the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is what mat­ters. And no coun­try in the world would recog­nise any bor­der oth­er than the bor­der that we cur­rent­ly have–or af­ter the (sub­stan­tive) rul­ing of the ICJ–the bor­der de­fined by that court.”

Mean­while, Luis Al­ma­gro, head of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) said the Court’s rul­ing was “fun­da­men­tal in re­quest­ing Venezuela to re­frain from all provoca­tive, war­mon­ger­ing and il­le­gal ac­tions that en­croach on the es­tab­lished bound­aries of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry”.

“The Court’s de­ci­sion is bind­ing and must be re­spect­ed by the Venezue­lan regime,” Al­ma­gro said.