In 11 days, large num­bers of Venezue­lans are ex­pect­ed to cast their votes in a ref­er­en­dum on the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela that has been a source of con­tention be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca for more than 100 years.

While the sin­gle po­lit­i­cal is­sue that has been re­ferred to the pop­u­la­tion of Venezuela is the dis­pute be­tween the coun­tries, they are be­ing asked to vote on five ques­tions.

Among the ques­tions Venezue­lans are be­ing asked is whether they agree with Venezuela's his­tor­i­cal po­si­tion of not recog­nis­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) to re­solve the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy over Es­se­qui­bo.

Venezue­lans are al­so be­ing asked to vote on whether they agree with the cre­ation of the Guayana Es­e­qui­ba state and with the propo­si­tion that the Guyanese cit­i­zens res­i­dent in the ter­ri­to­ry should be grant­ed Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship and iden­ti­ty cards.

The idea of ask­ing the pop­u­la­tion of Venezuela not to recog­nise the ICJ is prob­lem­at­ic. The ICJ is the prin­ci­pal ju­di­cial or­gan of the Unit­ed Na­tions and seems, there­fore, to be an ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum to set­tle ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­putes be­tween coun­tries.

In­stead of hav­ing the dis­pute set­tled fi­nal­ly by an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal com­pris­ing em­i­nent ju­rists, Venezuela ap­pears to be­lieve a res­o­lu­tion to the long-stand­ing dis­pute can re­sult from di­rect talks be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro wrote to Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res ear­li­er this month, ask­ing him to use his good of­fices "to restart, with the ur­gency that this con­tro­ver­sy mer­its, di­rect talks be­tween Guyana and Venezuela with the aim of ad­vanc­ing to­wards a peace­ful and ben­e­fi­cial un­der­stand­ing for both".

That let­ter sug­gests that, at some stage, di­rect talks be­tween Guyana and Venezuela could pos­si­bly re­sult in the for­mer con­ced­ing the mer­its of the Venezue­lan po­si­tion and agree­ing to give up its set­tled right to the Es­se­qui­bo. In the ab­sence of fur­ther de­tail, Venezuela's ex­pec­ta­tion that di­rect talks with Guyana would re­sult in a favourable out­come for the Span­ish-speak­ing coun­try seems dan­ger­ous­ly naïve, even fan­ci­ful.

Giv­en Venezuela's de­ci­sion to hold a ref­er­en­dum on this mat­ter, di­rect talks be­tween the par­ties, at this stage, are im­prac­ti­cal.

But we agree with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, when he said on Mon­day: "We all know that even in the dark­est hour, T&T’s po­si­tion was that if dif­fi­cul­ties arise, the re­sponse ought to be di­a­logue, di­a­logue and di­a­logue.”

In mak­ing that com­ment, Dr Row­ley was re­fer­ring to the role that T&T played in main­tain­ing its sup­port, four years ago, for who­ev­er was the oc­cu­pant of the Mi­raflo­res Palace in Cara­cas, who then hap­pened to be Pres­i­dent Maduro, when oth­ers in the hemi­sphere, and even in this re­gion, were pledg­ing their sup­port for Juan Guia­do.

That de­ci­sion by the Cab­i­net head­ed by Dr Row­ley was com­plete­ly ap­pro­pri­ate in the con­text of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions be­tween and among states and was the ap­proach adopt­ed by the UN.

T&T's sup­port for Pres­i­dent Maduro "even in the dark­est hour," along with this coun­try's re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela on the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on and Lo­ran/Man­a­tee nat­ur­al gas fields, places Port-of-Spain in the unique po­si­tion to act as an in­ter­locu­tor, who would low­er the tem­per­a­ture on both sides of the Es­se­qui­bo riv­er.

That is a role that seems tai­lor-made for Dr Row­ley him­self.