Guyana has registered its concerns to United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon following escalating claims by Venezuela over the Essequibo, the latest being reported overflights for the completing of an atlas and digital mapping, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge says.
“We have, as recent as last week, left with the Secretary General… a document which sets out… our concerns about the escalating claims and about the consequences of some of the steps they are taking,” Greenidge said when asked by Stabroek News yesterday for update on the border controversy with Venezuela.
It was only Tuesday that Guyana blasted Venezuela for the “vituperative” statement it issued on the 117th anniversary of the 1899 Arbitral Award, which was observed on Monday, again laying claim to the Essequibo.
The Foreign Affairs Minister informed that Guyana was very concerned about publications in the state-run Venezuela press about actions being taken to claim the Essequibo region. “They published information that they are carrying out overflights over the Essequibo with a view of completing an atlas of Venezuela, which would include two thirds of Guyana, and that they are doing a digital mapping of the area, again with the purpose of getting the details,” he said.
“The overflights are themselves illegal in international law,” he added, saying that if the reports emanating from the Venezuelan press are true, then these are serious matters and Guyana has “drawn them to their attention.”
And while acknowledging that the Guyana Defence Force has been tasked with defining Caracas’ latest aggression, international help will also be sought in determining if the overflights and mappings are indeed occurring.
“This is an ongoing process. The GDF itself has not provided us with that information, I am referring to info the Venezuelans themselves have made public. This has to be substantiated. The information has been provided to the GDF, with a view to them following it up and trying to substantiate,” Greenidge explained.
Questioned about Guyana’s capacity to undertake the investigations given its limited resources he said that international help will also be sought.
“You are right insofar as our capacity, to directly cover the whole land space and maritime space, but we have other ways of getting this information and we propose to use that,” Greenidge said.
The Foreign Affairs Minister said he believes that Venezuela’s latest aggression is “irresponsible and dangerous and we have said as much to the Secretary General of the United Nations. It is something that we view with the utmost concern.”
While Guyana commemorated the 117th anniversary of the Arbitral Award with a booklet detailing the process, a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, Venezuela was engaged in “a frenzied display of ill temper.” It noted that history has caught up with Venezuela, “revealing the tangled web of falsehoods on which [its] specious claims to Guyana’s Essequibo were built.”
The release said, “Guyana continues to uphold and respect the Arbitral Award of 1899. It will defend its validity in the world’s highest courts and expose Venezuela’s sordid efforts to besmirch Guyana’s development agenda.”
Calling Venezuela’s statement unworthy of a law abiding member of the international community, the release said it was “a reaffirmation of Venezuela’s disrespect for the rule of law among nations.”
The statement to which the ministry referred was publicized on Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Office’s website and reported by that country’s media outlets. A translation read: “117 years of the fraud suffered by our republic, executed by the action of imperial agents that stripped us of part of our territory, consisting of nearly 160,000 square kilometres that form an indivisible part of our Guyana Essequibo. We express the deepest outrage at how this nefarious date has marked the history of world diplomacy, which showed the vilest face of systematic depredation that the British Empire perpetrated against the territorial integrity of many nations of the world…”
Referring to Essequibo as its own, the Venezuelan government stated that it wants Guyana to go to a Good Officer process to settle the controversy.
“The current government of Guyana, motivated by dark transnational interests and imperial favour for corporate centres, has taken an arbitrary, illegal and unilateral action by attempting to rebut the Geneva Accord and try to wriggle out of the Good Officer process,” the statement read. It added, “Venezuela has requested the Secretary-General of the United Nations to reactivate the process of good offices…”
However, noting that the Good Offices Process had failed to resolve the controversy, Guyana has been pressing since last year for a juridical settlement which will be final and binding. A proposal to this end was made to UN Secretary General Ban last year following the issuance of a decree by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro laying claim to most of Guyana’s Atlantic waters. The Venezuelan decree had followed closely on the heels of an announcement by US Company ExxonMobil of a significant oil find in Guyana’s waters off the Demerara coast.
Meanwhile, according to the Foreign Ministry release, Guyana believes that the release of the book, The New Conquistadors/ Los Nuevos Conquistadores, will show not only an account of the Tribunal’s Award and Venezuela’s 60-year recognition of and respect for it, but evidence of its commitment to peace. “The New Conquistadors offers to all the world the true account of these events and illustrates the urgency of the need to bring this egregious Venezuelan misconduct to an end as the international community grapples for the supremacy of law and order worldwide,” the ministry said.
It added that the false claims in the Venezuelan government’s missive, “perpetuates the falsities that have marked its predatory campaign and have continued in relation to Guyana’s maritime space. Its greed for territory has added a new dimension of Guyana’s maritime resources.”
