So Maduro wants to talk based on the provisions of the Geneva Agreement. In the first place, President Ali must not give credibility, or fall victim, to the hoary tale of Venezuela’s false interpretation of the Geneva Agreement that it mandates a resolution of the border controversy by negotiation between the two countries. Negotiation was mandated only in relation to the Mixed Commission for a period of four years. Article 1 states: “A Mixed Commission shall be established with the task of seeking satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the controversy…” Article states: “If within a period of four years of this Agreement, the Mixed Commission shall not have arrived at a full agreement it shall, in its final report, refer to the Government of Guyana and the Government of Venezuela any outstanding questions. Those Governments shall without delay choose one of the means of peaceful settlement provided in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Geneva Agreement therefore provides for two modes of engagement. The first is negotiation for four years by the Mixed Commission and the second is by the means provided by Article 33 of the United Nations Charter. The four years of negotiation in the Mixed Commission produced no agreement. Thereafter the Port of Spain Protocol between Guyana and Venezuela froze the controversy for twelve years. The parties then met for approximately twenty years under the Good Offices of the Secretary General of the United Nations. No agreement materialized. Guyana then requested the United Nations Secretary General to refer the matter to the International Commission of Jurists for a “judicial settlement” under Article 33. An “Enhanced Mediation” process was recommended by the Secretary General but it failed to achieve any result. Article 33(1) of the United Nations Charter provides the following means for the resolution of disputes: “…negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.” Venezuela’s decades’ old claim that the Geneva Agreement provides for a resolution of the controversy only by negotiation is a bold-faced lie.
Before the ink was dry on the Geneva Agreement, Venezuela invaded Guyana’s half of Ankoko Island. Guyana continued to engage with Venezuela even after decades of threats, violations of sovereignty and acts of hostility of various kinds. When relations were at their lowest ebb, Guyana has persisted in its efforts to improve relations with Venezuela. Sporadic efforts after the late President Chavez visited Guyana in 2004 never materialized in enhancing relations to a level that would be expected between neighbours. But notwithstanding these decades of provocations, Guyana has never declined to meet with Venezuela generally and whenever Venezuela has suggested or requested meetings, including when Venezuela purported to hold a referendum on the incorporation of Essequibo as a State of Venezuela and in the face of a provisional order of the ICJ prohibiting actions of that type. The intervention of Brazil and St. Vincent and the Grenadines facilitated The Joint Declaration of Argyle for Dialogue and Peace between Guyana and Venezuela in December 2023.
The operative clauses of the Declaration enshrine: forbidding the threat or use of force, resolving controversies in accordance with international law, pursuing good neighbourliness and peaceful coexistence and agreeing that both States shall refrain from escalating any conflict arising from any controversy between them. These have been violated by Venezuela by its decision to hold elections for a Governor of the mythical Venezuelan State of “Guayana Essequiba” which consists of the territory of Essequibo over which Guyana has held actual and lawful sovereignty at least since the Arbitral Award of 1899. The above operative clauses have also been violated by Venezuela’s threatening intrusion into Guyana’s EEZ by an armed vessel for several hours earlier this month. It also shows great disrespect for Brazil and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and their leaders who expended great political will and skill in facilitating the meeting of the Presidents of Guyana and Venezuela in St. Vincent.
These actions by Venezuela, in particular the referendum on incorporating Essequibo as a State of Venezuela and the decision to now hold elections for a Governor of the mythical “Guayana Essequiba,” are clear violations of the Geneva Agreement which provided for the maintenance of the status quo between the two countries. Article V(2) states: “No act or activities taking place while this Agreement is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in the territories of Venezuela or British Guiana or create any rights of sovereignty in these territories…” Venezuela antics of a referendum now elections for Governor Essequibo do not confer any sovereign rights for it over the Essequibo.
The following are the compelling conclusions that must bedrawn in relation to Venezuela: It has no respect for international law; it has repeatedly and brazenly violated Guyana’s territory; It uses its superior military facilities to seek to intimidate Guyana; It has no respect for international opinion; It deceitfully misinterprets the Geneva Agreement in its favour; It frequently insults our leaders. After the multi-national effort to restrain Venezuela resulting in the Argyl Declaration, which Venezuela has violated without a second thought, the time for supplicating to Venezuela must now end.