Former Venezuelan foreign ministers criticise article on territory --El Nacional Stabroek News October 24, 1999 Two former Venezuelan foreign ministers have criticised the proposed Article 10 of the new Venezuelan constitution which in effect repudiates treaties and arbitral awards relating to territory which arenull and void. On Wednesday the Assembly approved an article which states that Venezuela will have the same territory as the Captaincy General in 1810 (prior to independence) "with the resulting modifications of treaties and arbitral awards not marred by nullity." Tthe latter is a reference to the Paris Award which settled the boundary between Venezuela and Guyana. However, according to the October 22 edition of the Venezuelan daily, El Nacional, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel has said that Venezuela would respect international accords. In the same issue El Nacional also stated that former foreign ministers accused the Constituent Assembly of being "naive and romantic" since the inclusion of the article would not recover territory lost as a result of these treaties. Isidro Morales Paul, foreign minister between 1984-5, is quoted as saying that Article 7 of the present constitution signified that the Republic admitted that the treaties had been validly signed. He said that what the Assembly was now attempting to do was to change the formulation to restrict the interpretation to those treaties not vitiated by nullity. But he observed that "in the end it is practically the same thing." He was quoted as describing the proposed change as "a little naive and even romantic" because "the validity or not of an international act - let's call it a treaty, judgement or arbitration - does not depend on the internal arrangements of the states, since if it were so, it would be very easy to escape from international obligations." Morales observed that the inclusion of the article "is not going to affect in any way the right of Venezuela in one sense or the other, neither for the better nor for the worse." But he did say that the article had some use in demarcating the internal rivers of Venezuela "taking as the base point the chain of islands which form the gateway of the continent and not the continental mass, a precedent which today permits us to include those waters under the denomination of interior sea." El Nacional said that Simon Alberto Consalvi, also a former foreign minister, believed that the procedure being followed by the Constituent Assembly was a repeat "of the patriotic errors which in the 19th century led the Venezuelan congressmen to reject the Fortique-Aberdeen accord and the agreement of Michelena - Pombo, treaties which although beneficial to Venezuela were rejected by our country." Consalvi was reported as explaining that while the inclusion of the article had been understandable from the point of view of patriotism, in terms of international law it was a position which had no bearing on the issue. He observed too that by raising expectations of correcting what was considered an historical injustice by all Venezuelans yhrough the inclusion of Article 10, the Constituent Assembly had "condemned [to failure] all possibility of negotiation and had tied the hands of the State in its search for what the Geneva Agreement called 'practical means' which it could opt to utilise in the peaceful settlement of the controversy. The daily said that he stressed too that Caracas could not unilaterally declare treaties null and void because they were not beneficial to the country. He said that as long as the principle of equity existed, a country which was party to a treaty with Venezuela could also unilaterally repudiate it if it considered that it was not in its interest to honour the obligation it imposed. Local observers here share the view that Article 10 does not make a difference in the controversy over the Essequibo region. For some four decades Venezuela, on the basis of a memorandum published after the death of its author at his request, has claimed that the award was not a judicial decision, but the result of a political deal. Observers point out that the Venezuelan Parliament had always backed its government's position on the controversy and that there had always been a clause in the Venezuelan constitution which prohibited the cession of territory. They say too that a country could pass any law but that once it was to apply to another country then it must be subject to the laws of the international community. A © page from: Guyana: Land of Six Peoples