Caracas seminar on Guyana suggests Venezuelan ID cards for Essequibans
Residents of Essequibo could be offered Venezuelan identity cards should the recommendations of a recent seminar held in Caracas be heeded. According to a report in the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional recently, the seminar was organised by the College of Internationalistes of Venezuela and the panelists included Elias Daniels an official of the Guyana Division of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a representative of the navy. Other recommendations urged the patrolling of the Atlantic seaboard of Essequibo and preparations to confront the policy of granting concessions in Essequibo. According to the Venezuelan daily, the participants of the sparsely attended seminar were given a lecture by a frigate captain in the Venezuelan navy about the surveillance and patrolling of the area. Adolfo Salguiero, an expert in public international law, struck a more conciliatory note by saying that the Venezuelan constitution could not be considered better than Guyana's and that the international regulations contained in the relevant treaties could not be nullified by either of them. On the other side, said the report, Oswaldo Suju Raffo of the Institute of Frontier Studies criticised the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for negotiating with Guyana, which he said should be converted into an associated state of his country much like Puerto Rico is to America. But lawyer Argenis Ferrer rejected this extreme position, and was quoted as saying "it would be difficult for those of us who are... internationalists and lawyers to accept that Essequibo may belong only to Venezuela." El Nacional said that Raffo pleaded the "urgent need" to begin once and for all the exercise of Venezuelan sovereignty over Essequibo, as a consequence of which he recommended the provision of identity cards to the inhabitants of the region. It was noted by others that this proposal was contradicted by the poor treatment they received when arriving at Puerto Ordaz with some being thrown out of the city. The issuance of identification cards was originally proposed in the 1980's, but according to the representative of the Foreign Ministry it never appeared in the Official Gazette. Former Foreign Minister Efrain Schacht Aristigueta made a call for an end to the policy of silence around border issues.
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