THE long-awaited hearing on the Guyana/Suriname border dispute is due to begin in Washington, D.C., tomorrow when oral pleadings by both countries over their respective maritime boundaries will be presented before the United Nations International Arbitral Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.
While confident about the strength of Guyana’s case and its chances of getting a favourable ruling, President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday said Guyana will be approaching tomorrow’s hearing “without recrimination or an adversarial posture”.
The hearing is scheduled to continue until December 20 and President Jagdeo said it will be several months before the tribunal delivers its award – perhaps around May next year.
“Now, after more than 3,000 pages of written pleadings and an interlocutory proceeding, we have come to the hearing itself – the oral hearing of Guyana’s initial claims under the UN Law of the Sea Convention,” President Jagdeo told a news conference at the Presidential Secretariat in Georgetown.
Noting that both parties wished for a neutral venue for the hearings, Mr. Jagdeo said the Organisation of American States (OAS) stepped in and “very generously offered” its headquarters building in Washington “for what it recognised to be a peace-building process between two member states”.
He said that under the rules of procedure agreed with the tribunal, the closed-door proceedings will be done “in camera”, a fairly normal practice and one where the pleadings are not made public.
“Guyana respects these rules and I am therefore constrained in what I can say to you now of the details of the case…,” the President told reporters.
He said there are major differences with Suriname in this matter and these will be fully aired in the hearing, but behind closed doors.
The President also said that even after the tribunal’s award is made, there will be limits on what can be divulged immediately.
“What I can assure you, however, is that in its conduct over all stages of the arbitration to date, Guyana has adhered scrupulously to the precept of advancing its rights within the principles and procedures of the United Nations Convention, and in the process strengthening the convention by our recourse to it.”
He assured that Guyana will continue to do that and said the authority of the UN Convention on matters pertaining to the Law of the Sea is crucial to the sovereign rights of the countries which are parties to it.
This, the President said, has important consequences. In this case, he said the tribunal’s award delimiting the maritime boundary between Guyana and Suriname will allow both countries to fully explore and exploit their off-shore resources with the complete assurance of an internationally binding award.
“Securing an authoritative line of delimitation will offer significant opportunities for Guyana’s economic development, as for Suriname’s,” the President asserted.
He also noted that “beyond the award lie long years of cooperation as good neighbours with the government and people of Suriname”.
Addressing the tribunal on Guyana’s behalf will be Foreign Minister Dr. Rudy Insanally, who is Guyana’s agent in the proceedings.
That team also comprises Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Attorney General and Foreign Affairs Minister of Guyana and Commonwealth Secretary General; Dr. Payam Akhavan, of Yale Law School; Professor Thomas Frank, who previously served as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); researcher Paul Reichler and other attorneys-at-law Mr. Philippe Sands and Mr. Andrew Loewenstein. They will be supported by technical consultants.
GUYANA/SURINAME DISPUTE:
Suriname has laid claim to a section of Guyana’s territorial sea, contending that the boundary on the continental shelf and the sea lies along a line originating at a point in Number 61 Village on the left bank of the Corentyne River and bearing 10 degrees East of true North.
Guyana, in disagreement with that claim, initiated the arbitral proceedings against Suriname in February 2004, in accordance with the UN International Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The border row between the two countries escalated in June 2000, when Suriname gunboats blocked the Canadian oil company, CGX Energy Inc, from drilling for oil in its concession off the Guyana shore.
Failed diplomatic efforts, by Guyana and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), to resolve the problem led to Guyana resorting to the international tribunal.
The tribunal has to make two decisions:
* whether it has jurisdiction in the matter, as Suriname has said it does not and
* to make an award with respect to the maritime boundary dispute.
President Jagdeo yesterday recalled that in an address to the nation on February 25, 2004, he announced that on the previous day, Guyana had initiated proceedings under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in relation to the maritime areas of Guyana and Suriname.
He explained that the purpose of those proceedings was to obtain a definitive ruling on the delimitation of the maritime spaces – a binding determination of the boundary between Guyana and Suriname of the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf.
“In short, to settle with finality the boundary between the off-shore areas of Guyana and Suriname,” President Jagedo told reporters.
In taking this action, he said Guyana sought to bring to an end the differences between the two neighbouring countries over the maritime boundary, differences which have undermined efforts to develop the resources associated with those off-shore areas and a deprivation which already poor countries cannot afford.
Fortunately, he said, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the international community has agreed on in happier times of global cooperation, offered a path to the resolution of “such wasteful disagreements”.
Guyana had a particular respect for this convention, Mr. Jagdeo said, pointing out that after more than a decade of international negotiation, it was finally concluded in the Caribbean at Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1982.
He noted that it was Guyana’s ratification of it – the 60th ratification - which brought the convention into force.
But Guyana’s respect for the convention went deeper, Mr. Jagdeo said.
“After centuries in which the use of force held sway in the world’s seas and oceans, and nowhere moreso than here in the Caribbean, the 1982 Convention inaugurated a regime of law and order for the governance of the world’s maritime areas.”
“One element of that regime for the peaceful use of those areas is the arrangement it made for settlement of disputes between parties to the convention – as both Guyana and Suriname are,” the President posited.
“It is these provisions that Guyana invoked to unlock the potential of the seas beyond our shores which differences with Suriname have placed in jeopardy,” President Jagdeo told reporters.
ARBITRATION PANEL
Alluding to the fact that it has been nearly three years since Guyana initiated these proceedings, President Jagdeo said this “long time” has been a time of considerable activity on both sides.
First came the constitution of the tribunal by agreement between Guyana and Suriname and Mr. Jagdeo said Guyana was fortunate to have secured the services of very eminent international arbitrators.
The panel is presided over by Dr. Dolliver Nelson of Grenada, the former President of the Standing International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. Dr. Kamal Hussain of Bangladesh and Professor Ivan Shearer of Australia – both outstanding international lawyers with special expertise in Law of the Sea matters, are the other two arbitrators nominated by the parties separately.
President Jagdeo said in Guyana’s case, this was done by the distinguished international lawyer Professor Thomas Frank and in Suriname’s by Dr. Hans Smith. “Altogether, Guyana feels privileged to have so eminent and erudite an international tribunal to decide the important matters Guyana has placed before them,” he said.
With the tribunal in place, the respective legal teams have been hard at work in preparing the written pleadings that are an essential part of the process where Guyana’s memorial will be presented first, then Suriname’s counter memorial, followed by Guyana’s reply and Suriname’s rejoinder.
“As we approach the hearing, it is those years ahead, cleared of current disagreements on our maritime boundaries, that should be uppermost in our minds,” President Jagdeo posited.
Declaring that he will exercise a “self–denying ordinance of making no public comment during the hearing”, he sought the cooperation of the media in this regard, and implored its members not to make the hearing a time of public confrontation.
The President yesterday also repeated the urgings he made to the Guyanese people during his February 2004 address to the nation, when he said: “Despite our differences in other matters, the political parties of this country have always been united in matters affecting Guyana’s territorial integrity…Today let us go forward in unity as one people, one nation with one destiny in affirming our resolve to stand together in defence of our territorial integrity under law – under the law of Guyana, under the law of nations.”
“To you, my fellow Guyanese, I appeal for your mature understanding of our actions. We must settle this urgent matter of our maritime boundary with Suriname with firmness but with dignity, so that both people can go forward in friendship with enhanced prospects of development,” he added.
“I repeat those urgings now so that generations to come will look back on this time with satisfaction in the course we took together under law, in protection and development of our national patrimony,” he said.