When the Heads of Government of CARICOM met with our President, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, supported by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), to recommend an Ali /Maduro meeting, subsequently to be followed by an invitation from the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, to President Ali and the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, to meet in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, few in Guyana were optimistic of a positive result and many, including myself, were doubtful of the wisdom of President Ali even attending the meeting.
As I had pointed out in my letter published on the 13th December in the Stabroek News, Guyana Chronicle and Guyana Times, President Maduro had made it clear in his letter to Prime Minister Gonsalves accepting the invitation, that he had no intention of respecting any ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and he persisted in completely misinterpreting and distorting the provisions of the Geneva Agreement.
The meeting of the two Presidents was concluded Thursday (14th December, 2023), monitored by the presence of a host of CARICOM Prime Ministers, facilitated by Gonsalves and the Prime Minister of Dominica and Chairman of CARICOM, Roosevelt Skerritt, and observed by high representative of the President of Brazil, Celso Amorim, as well as the high representatives of the UN Secretary General, Earle Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet of the Office of the Secretary General and Miroslav Jenca Under Secretary General of the UN Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.
No higher, more important nor significant set of witnesses and participants from our hemispheric region could have been assembled to ensure that whatever the two Presidents said to each other and ultimately agreed to, would be respected and, hopefully, honoured.
The universal relief and some satisfaction felt well beyond our region, including the most powerful countries in the world, is patent, at the outcome of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines meeting held in Argyle Airport, and the Joint Declaration of Argyle. The Declaration clearly and unequivocally agreed, albeit in suitable diplomatic language, that there will be no war, no use of force between Venezuela and Guyana with regard to the current controversies involving that part of Guyana called Essequibo.
When one considers that in advance of this meeting and up until the very moments before it took place, that Venezuela had taken explicit action and had issued explicit threats to annex and, probably, invade our
country, the result of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines meeting is an extraordinary, if not remarkable, achievement on the part of President Ali and those around him and an acknowledgement by President Maduro, that, whatever his enunciated claims to the Essequibo are, peace is preferential to war, dialogue is preferential to violent conflict and respect for the rule of international law is preferential to criminal behaviour towards another country.
With reference to the Joint Declaration, paragraphs 1 and 6 are especially important in their commitment to the denial of the use of force and the avoidance of conflict:
1. Agreed that Guyana and Venezuela, directly or indirectly, will not threaten or use force against one another in any circumstances, including those consequential to any existing controversies between the two States.
6. Agreed that both States will refrain, whether by words or deeds, from escalating any conflict or disagreement arising from any controversy between them. The two States will cooperate to avoid incidents on the ground conducive to tension between them. In the event of such an incident the two States will immediately communicate with one another, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Community of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC), and the President of Brazil to contain, reverse and prevent its recurrence.
It is truly unfortunate that having been invited to attend the meeting in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Aubrey Norton, decided against participating, particularly as the Opposition APNU/AFC are completely at one with the governing PPP/C with regard to the retention and protection of our territorial borders.
It is difficult to understand why Mr. Norton stuck his heels in with regard to the need for a specific agenda before attending the meeting. There already was an unspoken agenda on the part of the CARICOM and CELAC leaders, as Vice President Jagdeo had pointed out, that the focus of the meeting would be de-escalation of the conflict, avoidance of the use of threats and force and respect for international law.
The Declaration of Argyle, of course, is not the end of the matter of the Venezuelan claim to two-thirds of our land. Guyana will continue to rely on the ruling of the International Court of Justice to bring the matter to an end in spite of Venezuela’s current refusal to recognize the Court. The fact is, as a member of the United Nations, “by signing the Charter, a Member State of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the Court in any case for which it is a party”. The government of Venezuela is bound by that provision of being a UN Member.
I find, as does the Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs for the opposition, Ms. Amanza Walton-Desir, paragraph 9 of the Declaration unsettling, in that it uses the term “territory in dispute” rather than “controversy” for the precise reason of triggering future meetings, but we must accept that in any Joint Declaration the language is never perfectly what one side or the other would like.
What we do know and what is precise is that President Maduro has agreed to abandon his threats of force against our country and the expressed intentions of his contrived Referendum to take forceful possession of the Essequibo. It now remains to be seen whether President Maduro will be a man of his words expressed in the Declaration of Argyle.