For almost a year, the Guyana -Suriname National Border Commissions have not met despite several attempts by the Guyana government to schedule a meeting. The commissions are engaged in trying to identify from among the models used elsewhere a mutually acceptable arrangement to Guyana and Suriname that would allow joint exploitation of the resources of the area off the Corentyne Coast to which Suriname lays claim, pending a resolution of the maritime border between the two countries.
President Bharrat Jagdeo has expressed his frustration as the situation has dragged on with the various postponements of the talks as well as the added aggravation of Suriname's repeated attempts to unilaterally change the borders between the two countries. They have issued a new map, which shows the New River Triangle as Surinamese territory and have written to international organisations and diplomatic missions resident in Paramaribo advising that the new map should be the one they recognise. Guyana has protested these provocations and has reminded Suriname that its borders are universally accepted and recognised and remain unchanged.
Since January 2002 when President Bharrat Jagdeo and his Surinamese counterpart, Ronald Venetiaan, placed the simmering dispute in the hands of their national border commissions little has been accomplished. The heightened tension between the two countries resulted from Suriname's ejection of an oil rig by two Surinamese naval gunboats from its drilling position in its territorial waters off the Corentyne Coast.
The oil rig was being operated by CGX Energy a Canadian company, which had been licensed by the Guyana government to explore for oil in its exclusive economic zone off the coast of Berbice.
In the January 2002 meeting, the two presidents mandated the border commissions to look at best practices and modalities that could assist the governments in the taking of a decision regarding eventual joint exploration of hydrocarbon resources. It was a compromise reached that sought to address Suriname's reluctance to agree to joint activities in the area and Guyana's desire to encourage Suriname to move in that direction.
The two presidents also mandated the border commissions to address the wider issue of the border problems between the two countries.
The compromise was fuelled by the desire of Presidents Jagdeo and Venetiaan to take their countries to another level in the dialogue but their desire has been frustrated by suspicion on the part of the Surinamese.
With the bilateral discussions seeming to be going nowhere, observers have now begun to question whether or not Guyana should not seek to have a third party intervention in an effort to resolve the issue.
Tyrone Ferguson, a former Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Presidential Secretariat during the Desmond Hoyte administration at the just concluded international conference on governance, conflict analysis and conflict resolution tackled the issue. He questioned whether the best option for "finding a mutually acceptable and sustainable solution to this conflict is not the third-party option, and whether the present moment is not propitious to activate this option."
On the latter issue Ferguson argued that "a complex of influential determinative factors has served to decisively hamstring the bilateral negotiations" and lists among them the weak and problem ridden performance of both governments in the economic and political spheres, suspicion on the part of Suriname of Guyana's intentions, and the power of the veto in the decision-making process that is in the hands of the various ethnic groups in Suriname. He cites the Surinamese perception that the Guyanese negotiators are always trying to outsmart them as indicative of Guyana's bad faith in their eyes. "Suspicion of motives and mistrust are thus inserted into the bilateral negotiating process," and as such is a major hurdle to be overcome in the negotiations between the two countries.
Another not insignificant factor, according to Ferguson is "the latent sense of national grievance" generated by the military humiliation of Suriname in 1969 at the hands of Guyana when it tried to occupy and establish military installations in the New River Triangle.
He observed that the Surinamese gunboats' ejection of the CGX oil rig in June 2000 represented a reversal of the military upper hand that Guyana enjoyed during the preceding three decades. "Suriname was definitely not prepared in the circumstances to give up the balance of advantage that it had gained on Guyana, especially in the context of more than three decades of relations when Guyana incontestably held the upper hand."
Some observers have told Current Affairs that during the decade of the '90s Guyana has lost that network of information made possible by the number of Guyanese resident in Suriname which made possible back channels for information and contact between officials of both countries. They stressed the importance of channels of communications even in the most crisis-ridden times in the relations between two countries.
Another advantage which Guyana apparently squandered over the last decade is its superior diplomacy about which warnings were trumpeted from the editorial columns of the Stabroek News and more presciently from Cedric Joseph, whom Ferguson quotes as warning, "States experiencing domestic disruption and dislocation or approaching strongly contested general elections are inclined to resort to dramatic action, sometimes in their foreign policy, to divert domestic attention and cultivate jingoism at home. Such action can be directed against a neighbouring state perceived itself to be enmeshed in domestic turmoil affecting national cohesion and response," and "Since the elections of December 1997, Guyana appears to offer such a temptation. Further, the pursuit of such activist foreign policy is premised upon an analysis that the foreign policy of the neighbouring victim state is vulnerable and susceptible to probing."
Third party intervention could take various forms, all of which are costly but represent an expenditure that both countries must undertake if they are convinced that doing nothing about the present situation is not really an option any longer and if they are further convinced that their exhaustive attempts through the bilateral process to find a solution seem to be producing no positive results.
It has the advantage too of being able to come up with solutions to resolve issues in a relatively short time frame as happened in the cases of Belize and Guatemala and Peru and Ecuador.
Another advantage is that, according to Ferguson, third party intervention is susceptible to holistic treatment of multidimensional territorial conflicts, thus avoiding the potentially untidy and potentially dangerous unbundling of interlinked issues for discrete treatment via separate modalities.
A given is the poverty of both countries and the futility of having the not inconsiderable resources of the "area of overlap" remain unexploited while their peoples endure a life of penury and backwardness.
The choice before them is identifying the appropriate method of intervention that would allow them to reach a binding and mutually acceptable settlement of the dispute which the population of the two countries would endorse.
On the part of Suriname the government would have to find a way of salving the scarred national psyche of the Surinamese people as a result of the humiliating rejection of its military adventure to establish a military presence in the New River Triangle.
The opposition boycott of the sitting of the Suriname National Assembly when President Jagdeo addressed it during his January 2002 state visit is an indication of the problem. President Venetiaan acknowledged this when at a press conference in Guyana he said that there were strong pockets of resistance to joint exploration in both Guyana and Suriname. President Jagdeo has also acknowledged that there is opposition here but has declined to give any details of the groups that are opposed to such a venture by the two countries which they could undertake without prejudice to their claims.
Of the forms of third party intervention, mediation, arbitration and judicial settlement via such international bodies as the International Court of Justice (ICJ, observers say, are possible means which could have some appeal to both countries.
Mediation in the form of facilitation by CARICOM, which Jamaica's Prime Minister P J Patterson spearheaded has been tried without any success. Various reasons have been advanced for its failure. Raphael Trotman, the PNCR parliamentarian is of the view that the CARICOM effort was aimed at defusing a situation which constituted a clear and gathering danger rather than at resolving the issue. He said too that it highlighted the need for CARICOM to put in place a conflict resolution mechanism, the need for which the fishing dispute between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago emphasises.
Ferguson cites Suriname's distrust of a forum where it perceived Guyana as having a significant comparative advantage because it did not feel as "at home" in the English-speaking community as Guyana because of its relative unfamiliarity with the working language of CARICOM - English - significant gaps in communication and other cultural differences and the fact that Guyana had the benefit of longer membership in the Community.
He posited in his paper, "Insofar as effective mediation is premised fundamentally on the sense of impartiality or neutrality that the mediator brings to the mediation process, then it did not matter what Prime Minister Patterson brought to the table in terms of good faith and objectivity."
As a consequence Ferguson concludes that Suriname could not perceive CARICOM as a neutral broker and that in those circumstances Guyana had an overwhelming negotiating advantage. For Ferguson that "perception essentially determined the outcome of the CARICOM mediation effort."
As a consequence he says that the Organisation of American States (OAS), to which both countries belong is a forum which could be attractive for Suriname for the purpose of mediation. Apart from not suffering the disadvantage of being the newer member of the two in the OAS where Suriname has a ten-year jump on Guyana, Ferguson asserted, "The OAS process is credible because it has worked," and it is "moreover buttressed by the prospective supportive funding that is available to the parties under the OAS Peace Fund." Also, he said, "it is very politically and diplomatically difficult for parties utilizing this process to disavow reached agreements."
Other observers sees the United Nations as another possible forum for mediation since that world body has a wealth of experience and could bring to bear a not inconsiderable wealth of experience in problem solving, but agreements reached are not binding on the parties except with their prior agreement.
Arbitration could be binding and could be an option favoured by Guyana even though it has the experience of Venezuela's rejection of the 1899 Arbitral Award which was described as a full and final settlement of the border between the two countries. However, observers believe that the environment now would support a binding settlement given the ability for such a decision to be widely distributed.
Whatever the method of intervention, both governments would need to ensure that there is some consensus on the move toward third party intervention. This consensus would have to be generated by a comprehensive public education programme and the removal of the issue from partisan politics.
In Guyana recent constitutional amendments have led to the establishment of a parliamentary standing committee on foreign affairs where issues of territorial integrity can be discussed with the aid of expert advice. Trotman suggests that if the government were to move in the direction of third party intervention it should first seek parliamentary approval. Ferguson has noted that the government has so far tapped the expertise available irrespective of political affiliation. What he did not mention was that it was a move the government had to be persuaded to take when it recognised that the Surinamese had mobilised its best brains to deal with the issue. Its approach also allowed for a period of intense good relations with the media but that also because the Surinamese government had enlisted the Surinamese media in its campaign.
Ferguson underlines the importance of government bringing along its population, explaining that while s state-led process is needed to carry forward the diplomacy of third party intervention, "the argument is that space should be found in this process for the inclusion of civil society," and "the modalities for any such involvement are matters for consultation between respective governments and civil society representatives."
The recourse to third party intervention requires political will on the part of both governments since it could mean being ahead of its population on the issue, and would call for courage and boldness, which could come at a high cost, the least of which is the loss of office.
But it's a move that could be dictated as much by the security interests of the countries as by their development imperatives, especially in cases like Guyana and Suriname where foreign investment is crucial to the development of their economy. Guyana and Suriname are multi-ethnic societies and their political and economic stability can only be assured by the quantity of the resources that would allow each group to comfortably share in its distribution free of rancour and distrust.
Both countries have tried and must now be convinced that the resort to force has not and will not work and that the key to the resolution of its border problems in a world environment that frowns on force-induced resolution of disputes is the use of a mutually acceptable mechanism for settling them. For both countries, third party intervention should now be an appealing option.