–if Guyana-Venezuela border matter is taken to the ICJ

THE Government of Guyana will stand the cost of the legal fees, if the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy is referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said.

“In the event that the matter goes to the ICJ, the legal fees will be paid by the Government of Guyana. The Government of Guyana is responsible for that. It is a national sovereignty matter and it is something that we will have to pay for,” Minister Harmon told reporters during a post-Cabinet media briefing at the Ministry of the Presidency on Thursday.

Local analysts have linked an alleged US$20M signing bonus between the Coalition Government and US oil-giant ExxonMobil to the payment of legal fees in the event the border controversy goes to the ICJ, but Minister Harmon on Monday put the speculations to rest.

He said oil companies operating here will have no hand in the matter while reinforcing that it is a “Government responsibility”.
The Governments of Guyana and Venezuela, following a high-level meeting in New York late October, have reaffirmed their commitment to the Good Offices process.
In 2015, the Government of Guyana lobbied the then United Nations Secretary-Genera, Ban ki-Moon to take steps towards a resolution of the controversy, using an option from the menu as stated in the 1966 Geneva Agreement.

Article IV of the 1966 Geneva Agreement says if the controversy is not resolved following the selection of one of the means of peaceful settlement, then “the Secretary-General of the United Nations shall choose another of the means stipulated in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations and so on, until the controversy has been resolved, or until all the means of peaceful settlement there contemplated have been exhausted.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has noted that in 2016, as a consequence of a stalemate on the matter, outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon agreed with his successor, António Guterres, to continue to use the Good Offices Process until the end of 2017 as a means of arriving at a settlement.

If, by the end of 2017, no significant progress has been made toward arriving at a full agreement for the solution of the controversy, the UN Secretary General has committed to choose the ICJ as the next means of settlement, unless the Governments of Guyana and Venezuela jointly request that he refrain from doing so.

The present Good Offices Process has been conducted since 1990. Venezuela is contending that the Arbitral Award of October 3, 1899 demarcating the border between Guyana (British Guiana at the time) and Venezuela is null and void. Consequently, it continues to lay claim to two-thirds of Guyana’s territory.