The Suriname government has reserved the right to present its case on the issue of jurisdiction before the law of the sea arbitral tribunal when it is constituted.
Suriname's position was stated in the diplomatic note its government delivered to the Guyana government when it named Professor Hans Smit as its arbitrator for the case which Guyana has brought before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.
Suriname's De Ware Tijd newspaper yesterday reported that the Surinamese government is challenging the competency of the tribunal to hear Guyana's claim.
One ground on which it is basing its challenge is that Guyana and Suriname have not exhausted all options to settle the dispute as mandated by Chapter XV of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Another ground is that Guyana has not made every effort to arrive at practical arrangements as mandated by Articles 74 and 83 of the UN Convention.
And the final ground on which it is challenging the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal, is that not all aspects of the dispute between itself and Guyana might fall under the competence of the tribunal to hear.
Suriname's jurisdictional challenge echoes claims it made at the recently concluded Caricom Intersessional Meeting in St Kitts where it raised the issue in a last, minute bid to present its case to the Caricom heads.
At the Intersessional meeting, the Guyana delegation pointed out that the move to the UN body was taken after it had exhausted every attempt to resolve the issue bilaterally. Also, Guyana contended that the move was in accordance with the spirit of Caricom and the international community. Barbados, which has also moved to the UN to have a similar dispute resolved with Trinidad and Tobago, concurred.
Guyana and Suriname have been trying since June 2000 to arrive at arrangements that would allow for the joint exploration and exploitation of the resources of that area of Guyana's exclusive economic zone that Suriname is claiming. There were bilateral meetings in Trinidad and Tobago, Georgetown and Paramaribo as well as Caricom-facilitated discussions in Canouan, St Vincent and at Montego Bay and Kingston, Jamaica, under the chairmanship of Jamaica's Prime Minister P. J. Patterson.
Suriname claimed at the St Kitts meeting that it was Guyana which had refused to sign a memorandum of understanding in Jamaica that would have allowed joint exploration. Guyana rejected this assertion.
The discussion followed Suriname's eviction by force of an oil rig operated by the Canadian company CGX which was licensed by Guyana to explore for oil in its maritime territory. As part of its claim before the UN arbitral tribunal process, Guyana is seeking compensation for Suriname's breach of the UN Convention by its forceful eviction of the CGX oil rig from its exclusive economic zone.
At the root of dispute is Suriname's claim that its border with Guyana is the western bank of the Corentyne River and its contention that Guyana's exclusive economic zone is bounded by a 10-degree line extending from an identified point on the Corentyne coast. Guyana's claim before the UN tribunal is that its border should be the line of equidistance from identified points on the east and west banks of the Corentyne River.