By Svetlana Marshall

STATING clearly that Guyana rejects the “backhanded” attempts to despoil its rights, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge told the National Assembly on Thursday that Venezuela seems prepared to ruin the UN process of a peaceful resolution to the border controversy.On February 4, Venezuela’s Minister of People’s Power for External Relations, Delcy Rodriguez, declared that “Venezuela will deliver the country’s formal accusation, observations and proposals to the documents presented on the territorial controversy…we reaffirm the legitimate rights of Venezuela over the Essequibo Territory…”

At the time, Rodriguez was speaking to the Director of the General Secretariat of the United Nations, Edmund Mulet, at the UN Headquarters in New York. In addressing the National Assembly on this development, Minister Greenidge said the statement made by Rodriguez contained several falsehoods and innuendoes. He said the Government of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana “repudiates in its entirety the statement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Minister.”

“That statement is yet another example of Venezuela’s time-worn belief that falsehoods repeated often enough may eventually lose their basic falsity. They do not. Venezuela has no ‘rights over the Essequibo’,” Minister Greenidge told the House.

It was only last year that President David Granger called on the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, to settle through a judicial process Venezuela’s contention that the 1899 Arbitral Award is null and void.

“…the UN Secretary General has had discussions with both Guyana and Venezuela, and has made proposals for ‘The Way Forward’. Guyana has been cooperating with him, and will continue to do so. Venezuela, however, seems prepared to derail the process,” Minister Greenidge told the National Assembly.

Turning back the pages of history, the Foreign Affairs Minister recalled that Guyana’s rights over the Essequibo were settled by the Award of the international Tribunal of Arbitration in 1899. That tribunal was established under the Treaty of Washington. At the time, the then Government of Venezuela had undertaken to accept the award as “a full, perfect and final settlement.”

“Venezuela did accept the decision – jointly with the United Kingdom – demarcating the boundary on the ground and drawing up a definitive map depicting the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela, identifying the Essequibo as being within British Guiana – in accordance with the 1899 Arbitral Award,” Minister Greenidge said.

But, he said, there were always elements in Venezuela who were bent on pushing the notion that the 1899 Arbitral Award was “null and void”.

“Britain resisted them; their final rejection being the Geneva Agreement of 1966, which acknowledged that Guyana would be free, and ensured that Venezuela could not pursue its “nullity” contention against the new state, save in specified ways, starting with a mixed commission and empowering the United Nations Secretary General to bring the contention to finality by judicial settlement, consonant with the Charter of the United Nations.”

But from the outset, Venezuela delayed pursuing their nullity contention; pursuing instead a policy of harassment of the new state, impeding its development by threatening investors, Minister Greenidge pointed out.
He added: “It kept Guyana out of the OAS for 25 years. Contemptuous of international law, it has issued decrees asserting maritime claims progressively more and more outrageous. And it remains one of the few countries of the world to have excluded itself from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

February 17 will mark 40 years since the Geneva Agreement was reached, and according to Minister Greenidge, it should be a time when Venezuela seeks to fulfill the objectives of the Agreement, and not frustrate them under a cloak of righteousness.

“Guyana will not allow the deceptions being peddled by Venezuela to persist,” he stated.

The Foreign Affairs Minister strongly believes that Venezuela’s behaviour towards Guyana is a festering wound to peace and development in the region, and an affront to the rule of law in the world. Nevertheless, he said Guyana will continue to extend a hand of friendship to the people of Venezuela, but he maintained that there are forces in Venezuela who have made it their life’s mission — abusing the hallowed memory of Bolivar — to hold Guyana hostage to their crusade of greed.

“Guyana is a child of decolonisation. Its ancestry lies in the Charter of the United Nations – its purposes and principles. Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are its international heritage. We will remain faithful to the demands of both; and we look to the international community to stand with us in Venezuela’s assaults upon them,” he stated. In a further response to the statement made by Rodriguez, the Foreign Affairs Minister called on the National Assembly to collectively endeavour to defend Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Rodriguez’s statement will be brought to the attention of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the members of the Security Council, and the wider membership of the United Nations, the Foreign Affairs Minister said.