President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday challenged the faculty of the Anton De Kom University to lead the way in changing attitudes to longstanding disputes. He also challenged them to bring an end to their estrangement from the development process by entering into a constructive engagement with policy makers to influence policy.

He urged them to play a greater role in increasing public awareness of the challenges of globalisation and in explaining the policy decisions that their government have to make.

His visit to Suriname, he said, was not only to talk about the border but to pursue a programme of strategic cooperation to address the common threats, which their countries face. "If our peoples don't understand those threats then our survival will be threatened as globalisation makes possible the movement of capital goods and people across physical borders."

He said the two countries could not allow differences over their border to interfere with that process.

President Jagdeo noted that in the past hard positions were acceptable but the global reality called for taking a larger view and not focusing on the fine print and in the process losing the whole document.

He said that the resolution of the border dispute needed to be seen not as one winner and a loser but a "win-win" situation for both countries.

The Guyanese president believes that joint exploitation of the marine resources in the disputed maritime area should be pursued pending the resolution of their border dispute.

President Jagdeo stressed that Guyana and Suriname, as the CARICOM states with a common land border must lead the way in the establishment of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. He told his audience that no one was going to look out for the interests of their country and his, and that the Guyanese and Surinamese peoples have to do that for themselves. He reasserted that if the peoples of the two countries did not change their thinking, they would be left behind. "We will not survive unless we rely on ourselves."

With a combined population of about 1.3 million, President Jagdeo stressed that the two countries had to maximize the use of their resources to address the needs of their peoples.

He said that the viewpoint of the two sides had to see the loss as a result of non-cooperation in terms of people - the people dying because of the governments' inability to provide them access to proper health facilities, schoolchildren going to school without food - instead of numbers.

President Jagdeo also urged the university staff to contribute to the creation of a CARICOM identity, which was necessary if the regional integration movement is to play a more positive role in world affairs. He stressed too the contribution they could make in strengthening the negotiating positions of CARICOM, the one area in which the regional movement had been successful in cooperating in putting its positions in the negotiations at the level of the World Trade Organisation and the negotiations for establishment of the Free Trade Areas of the Americas. But he cautioned that there was a need for their negotiations to be carried out against the background of a regional development strategy.

In response to the lone question from the floor, President Jagdeo noted that there was also a role for civil society, pointing out that despite the problems between Guyana and Suriname, there were friendships at many levels and interaction between sections of the business community. The role of civil society then was to ensure a better understanding of the issues.

His address at the university was the first engagement of his two-day state visit to Suriname. President Jagdeo was welcomed with a 21-gun salute and 100-man Guard of Honour mounted by the Surinamese Defence Force at the Johan Pengel Airport under a slightly overcast sky, sparing him the rains which greeted the press corps which arrived here on Sunday. He arrived in the GDF's newly-commissioned Y-12 light aircraft piloted by Lt Cols Egbert Fields and Lloyd Marshall.

It was followed by a lunch time forum with the Surinamese business sector from which the press was excluded at the Hotel Krasnapolsky. Later on, President Jagdeo met President Venetiaan and his Cabinet and later in the evening he attended a reception in his honour at the Presidential Palace.

The arrival ceremony at the airport included the inspection of the Guard of Honour and an introduction to the reception party, which included Vice President Jules Ajodha and Foreign Minister, Marie Levens. The two Presidents at the head of the motorcade then swept into the city, with the sirens of the Military Police outriders blaring a smooth passage for them among the mid-morning traffic to the Hotel Torarica.

President Jagdeo's passage evoked mild interest even among the blue-jeaned school children on the way home from school and some residents curious about the sirens. The Guyana delegation includes Foreign Minister, Rudy Insanally; Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Elisabeth Harper; Political Adviser, Kellawan Lall; Frontiers Division Head, Keith George and Head of the Private Sector Commission, Brian James.