UN team arrives today to help resolve Guyana/Venezuela tensions
August 29, 2015 | By KNews | Filed Under News, Source
A United Nations (UN) Mission, dispatched by Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is scheduled to arrive today to discuss options for peacefully resolving the Guyana/Venezuela land and sea territorial controversy.
The Government of Guyana will be hosting the UN Mission with the aim of finding options under the Geneva Agreement for a resolution of Venezuela’s contention that the Arbitral Award of 1899 is null and void.
The Mission is in keeping with the Secretary General’s commitment to conduct an examination of the boundary ruling after Guyana formally indicated that after 25 years of the Good Offices Process, no solution to the border controversy had been found, and that it was time to invoke another means of settlement.
While in Guyana, the UN Representatives will meet with several current and former Government officials including Vice President and Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge, Ralph Ramkarran, former Guyana Facilitator in the Good Offices Process and former Foreign Ministers Sir Shridath Ramphal, Rashleigh Jackson and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Ambassadors Rudolph Collins and Elisabeth Harper, as well as Maj. General Ret’d Joseph Singh.
The UN Mission, led by Martha Doggett, Chief of the Americas Division, Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations, arrives in Guyana on August 29th and is scheduled to depart on September 2nd, 2015.
In his June 10 National Assembly statement, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge, had declared that “…a juridical settlement in respect of Venezuela’s contention that this Award is null and void appears to be the best, if not the only way now open to us.”
The UN Secretary General had first agreed to the Mission early last July, following a meeting with President David Granger and a delegation following the 36th CARICOM Heads of Government Summit in Barbados.
The two met for a brief engagement at the Hilton Hotel in Barbados where the Conference of Heads of Government is being held.
At the time, the President informed the Secretary General of Venezuela’s latest aggression towards Guyana which had gone beyond Guyana and Venezuela as it had contaminated relations with the entire Eastern Caribbean.
The UN Secretary General had committed to the Mission being sent to Guyana with the aim of addressing the matter from a more in depth and informed platform.
“We expect the UN Secretary General to play an important role in reducing the level of tension and to support Guyana in having the decree withdrawn,” Granger told reporters in June.
Shortly after the inauguration of President Granger in May, Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro decreed that the waters off the shores of Guyana’s Essequibo region were Venezuelan territory.
The decree came shortly after an oil exploration ship for the American company ExxonMobil announced a “significant” oil find in the Stabroek Block, which falls in the claimed territory.
As Venezuela faces high inflation rates and a crippling economy, many international observers viewed the territorial claim by President Maduro as move to garner support for his government with an election on the horizon later this year.
Venezuela has even made controversial territorial claims against its western neighbour, Colombia. Tensions are currently high between the two countries as military presence was increased along their borders.
