President David Granger will be attending the Mercosur summit this week in Brasilia but will venture to Brazil one day early to seek support over the ongoing controversy with Venezuela which was exacerbated by two recent maritime decrees from Caracas seeking to appropriate Guyana’s Atlantic waters.
Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman yesterday stated that the president will be going to introduce the new government of Guyana to Brazil’s head of state, Dilma Rousseff but additionally a topic of discussion will be Guyana’s sovereignty.
“People believe that this is just some old romantic notion that Venezuela may have but his Excellency of course has a golden opportunity to present Guyana’s case to his South American brothers and sisters so yes this visit is not just for us to say hello and I’d like meet you, but to explain and redefine our position and to define it to those who may have differing ideas as what is going on”, Trotman stated at a press conference at the Ministry of the Presidency.
He said that while the President was in Brazil attending the July 16-17 trade summit, visiting any country within the South American bloc allows for an opportunity to reinforce Guyana’s position over its territorial integrity.
Tensions between Guyana and Venezuela have flared up over the last few months since the latter issued a decree on May 26 seeking to annex a vast expanse of Guyana’s maritime territory and portions of the zones of other Caricom countries.
Under unrelenting criticism from Guyana, Venezuela later retracted decree 1787 and issued another decree on July 6 which has not satisfied Guyana even though it removed all geographic coordinates.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who has been belligerent over the maritime decrees in recent days and has ordered a review of relations with Guyana is expected to be at the summit.
On Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Greenidge stated that Guyana will formally notify Caricom of its disaffection with the new decree, 1859. The minister said there was need to formally state that key issues remain unsolved.
Greenidge said, “The Caricom Heads of Government when looking at the actions of Venezuela… recognize and acknowledge the inveigled claims in territories of Caricom which are illegal, [they] expected that Venezuela would be doing something about those claims.”
The minister said his understanding is that the new decree “has not done much to attenuate the concerns of the Caricom countries, it, interestingly enough, seems to have done enough to at least assuage the most burning concerns of Colombia. Isn’t that interesting?”
It is being suggested that the second decree was aimed at quelling Bogota’s concerns so as to lessen the diplomatic pressure that was likely to build against Venezuela in South American groupings. Colombia had formally protested against the May 26th decree.
Greenidge has also spoken about the Good Officer process which Venezuela is attempting to rekindle, stating that it has run its course without yielding results in some 25 years.
“It has already been indicated by the previous government that the process of good officers has run its course.
It can’t take us anywhere constructive and indeed I think the feeling is as it has evolved it has served as the cover, not deliberately on the part of the UN of course, but it has served for a cover under which Guyana’s sovereignty has been threatened (by Venezuela) …”
In the same breath the minister restated that the next functional step would be a judicial solution. “I don’t know what else you can do in terms of mediation when you think of what has been happening over the years and… the only option that is left would be for a judicial resolution of this matter that is our position,” he said.
Known as the Common Market of the South, Mercosur consists of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela as full members.
