Govt, advisors, legal counsel already in talks – Greenidge

Guyana-Venezuela border controversy

…as Guyana prepares to present case to ICJ

By Jarryl Bryan

Government has commenced preparations to present its arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy, with high-level meetings between the Foreign Affairs Ministry, its advisory committee and legal counsel being held over the weekend.
This is according to Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge, who on the side lines of the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration (IMO) consultations on Monday said that immediate work has already begun.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its advisory team and its lawyers met all day yesterday (Sunday), into the evening. And they mapped out the broad options, the issues that needed immediate attention and those that Cabinet has to give policy guidance.”
Greenidge, who only recently returned from an official trip to India, admitted that the UN Secretary General’s decision has not yet been discussed at the level of Cabinet because of the short timeframe. But he said that the matter would be engaging the attention of Cabinet this week.
“In the course of the week, that report will be presented to Cabinet, and Cabinet will be asked to make some decisions on the legal team… decisions to make on issues to do with timing, how exactly it will treat with the Court… there are a number of things.”

Negotiations
Following the UN ruling, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been quoted publicly affirming that his Government did not agree with the decision and that continued negotiations would have been preferable.
It is understood that now that the matter has been referred to the ICJ, this referral is not contingent on Venezuela’s agreement. When asked about this, Greenidge made it clear that the time for the Good Offices Process had passed, but Government was open to new methods of resolution if prescribed by the UN.
“The Good Officer’s Process, as Guyanese know it, has finished. It has been completed. We have been at it for 25 years and within the post-1966 period the mechanisms set out there have all been exhausted. We are now moving towards the one chosen by the SG. We are and will continue to be members of the UN.
“Within the framework of the UN, the SG has a role in any dialogue between countries that may pose challenges. I take it that Venezuela is aware of that framework. In that regard, we stand ready to work along with the SG, Venezuela and anyone else in this phase. But the old arrangement, the Good Offices and the attempt by the UN to have other forms of resolution have been exhausted.”
Relations between Guyana and Venezuela have been rocky ever since oil giant ExxonMobil announced in 2015 that it had found oil in Guyana. Venezuela has staunchly been against oil exploration in Guyana’s Stabroek Block, where multiple oil deposits were found by ExxonMobil.
In fact, Venezuela’s National Assembly had approved an agreement to reject the oil exploration activities in March 2017. Venezuela, with almost 40 times the population of Guyana and a territory that is several times bigger, claimed, in 1968, the entire territorial sea of Guyana by means of the Leoni Decree.
In 2015, the Government of Guyana requested then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to take steps toward resolving the controversy. In 2016, as a consequence of a stalemate on the matter, the outgoing Ban 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.
It is with that intention that Guterres appointed Dag Halvor Nylander as an envoy to resolve the border controversy. According to the mandate of the UN SG’s Personal Representative, “If, by the end of 2017, the Secretary General concludes that no significant progress has been made toward arriving at a full agreement for the solution of the controversy, he will choose the International Court of Justice as the next means of settlement, unless the Governments of Guyana and Venezuela jointly request that he refrain from doing so.”
That process expired and Guterres last week ruled that the matter would engage the attention of the Hague, Netherlands-based ICJ, where a panel of distinguished judges will hear Guyana’s case.