The negotiations with the former President Perez
Editorial
In last Saturday's edition of the Guyana Chronicle, there was a front-page report quoting former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez as having told a television station that Venezuela should renounce its land claim to Essequibo in exchange for sea. Perez reportedly expressed the view that his country should seek sovereignty over some 1,000 square kilometres of the Atlantic belonging to Guyana, in order to give her greater ocean access. Most significantly, he was quoted as remarking that the exchange of land for ocean was "the way negotiations were proceeding when I left office." Initially it is worth observing that this is the very first time on this side of the border that Guyanese have ever been told exactly what demands the Venezuelans have put on the table during negotiations. In general, the population on the western side of the frontier has always been kept more au fait with the status of talks, and what the general expectations of their government were than their counterparts here. The very least that can be said about the Chronicle story is that it opens up for debate in Guyana dimensions of the issue which had been treated with great discretion before. That the Venezuelans have always wanted something from Guyana no one ever doubted; the question has always been how much? It was believed by most rational people that Caracas did not seriously expect to annexe the whole of Essequibo; having mounted a tiger it was assumed that she tended to see her route to dismounting as coming via some concessions from this country. (Having said that, there were elements in Venezuela, such as certain members of the old Copei party who were not prepared to entertain anything less than the whole of Essequibo.) Venezuela's obsession with access to the ocean goes back to 1899, when the tribunal which met in Paris awarded her Barima Point (which Britain had very much wanted) and the land adjoining it apparently in order to give her complete access to and control of the mouth of the Orinoco river. Clearly not satisfied, the question of ocean access has been raised not just by former President Perez, but also current President Hugo Chavez, who has carried the matter a step further by indicating his intention to grant oil concessions in Guyana's waters off Essequibo. There has been no response to the Chronicle report from Guyana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so we do not know how seriously the Government of Guyana was taking the proposals referred to by former President Perez; one can only hazard that the negotiations possibly came under the auspices of the Good Officer process. President Perez was succeeded in 1994 by President Caldera, but again, it is not known whether the talks with Guyana proceeded along the same lines as under the previous presidency. All that was said publicly here was that at the Association of Caribbean States meeting in Trinidad in 1995, former President Caldera had referred to discussions with President Jagan on the "demarcation" of maritime and continental boundaries. President Chavez has proved far more aggressive in pursuit of Venezuela's claim than his immediate predecessors. And his forceful utterances have not been confined to matters relating to Guyana's territorial sea and Exclusive Economic Zone; he has been equally belligerent in tone about the Waini land concession to Beal Aerospace. The Chronicle reported former President Perez as saying that the resurgence of the controversy was because Presdent Chavez had to divert national attention from the serious social and economic problems affecting most Venezuelans through an appeal to patriotism. Hidden in this difference of approach is a lesson for Guyana. Leaving aside, for the moment, this country's impeccable moral and legal right to the whole of Essequibo and its maritime zone, and looking simply through the lens of pragmatism, some of the real dangers of making any kind of concession to our neighbour become all too apparent. The Government of Guyana clearly did no deal on our portion of the ocean in 1994; but suppose, for the sake of argument, it had done so. Would President Chavez have accepted that as a final solution to the controversy now? The evidence is he would not have done so.
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