Dear Editor,

Judging the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, who insulted the Guyanese President by not attending the just concluded X1X meeting of the Rio Summit, from all the speeches he has made the past seven years, he certainly finds the American President, George Bush an imperialist leader. The trouble is, Mr Chavez is not far behind and may in fact be a worst imperialist agent than those he claims are out to dominate countries.

If any nation should find Mr Chavez an imperialist crusader it is this country. In any fight between the Venezuelans and the Americans, we Guyanese must choose the side of the Americans. All Guyanese must understand two facts about world politics at the moment. One is that the American govern-ment has absolutely no interest in claming Guyanese territory. The second one is that a serious threat to the existence of this territory comes from a government headed by Hugo Chavez

In the seven years he has been in power he has not once mentioned the border dispute in his anti-imperialist ranting. Mr Chavez came to power repudiating the policies of his predecessors. He claimed that they were imperialist stooges. It was his predecessors that invoked a nonsensical claim against Guyana. This demand for almost all of Guyana’s territory is nothing short of a comedy. Here is a brief summary of a most idiotic testimony justifying a territorial claim on another country

In 1899, after an international arbitration hearing to determine the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela, a settlement was agreed on and thus was established the Essequibo as Guyanese territory. At that legal hearing, Venezuela was represented by four lawyers. One of them, Mr Severo Mallet-Pr