THE EDITOR: The resumption of direct bilateral negotiations to be hosted by President Lula of Brazil cannot proceed until and unless the parties withdraw the dispute from the current remit of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
This will also be an affront to the office of the secretary general of the UN, who referred the dispute to the ICJ for adjudication in March 2018.
Guyana will and must not subscribe to conducting new negotiations at the bidding of Lula because it is in a superior legal position today than before the ICJ’s provisional measures judgement.
The ICJ validated Guyana’s exercise of sovereignty and unbroken continuous control over the Essequibo over a period of 124 years.
That means that its claim to Essequibo has now been made legitimate and opposable to and binding on Venezuela via, firstly by statutory international law (1899 arbitration and 1905 Treaty of Washington), secondly by customary international law (continuous and unbroken occupation and administration), and thirdly by the judicial pronouncement of the UN’s highest court (ICJ).
Third-party mediation can proceed to get Venezuela to cease and desist from its sabre-rattling, persistent lawlessness and boisterous rhetoric, but Guyana cannot be party to any attempt to impugn the integrity of the ICJ where and only where it can have its sovereignty validated and Essequibo retained as part of its territory.
Guyana has no part of Essequibo to concede as a quid pro quo for reaching a mutually acceptable agreement with Venezuela, which has no compelling legal case to present.
Guyana possessed and administered the Essequibo legally for 124 years, half of that time with Venezuelan full acquiescence. It cannot be coerced and forced to surrender even a square inch of Essequibo through the threat and illegal use of force by a pariah state of Venezuela just to preserve the region as zone of peace. The threat to the peace and stability of the region originates exclusively from Caracas so that this appeal to the parties to preserve the peace is a fig leaf to hide cowardice and diplomatic ambivalence
Mediation and good offices must be focused now on getting Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro to withdraw all his recent unilateral annexation diktats that violated and completely infringed the December 1 judgement of the ICJ, as well as to stop his filibustering that makes the boundary issue prolonged and more difficult to resolve, including the abolition of the results of his ill-advised referendum of December 3.
Guyana cannot make concessions that will telegraph to developing countries still recovering from the yoke of colonialism that might is still right in complete violation of all that the UN stands for and symbolises since 1945, because Venezuela threatens with the use of its superior weaponry to subjugate a militarily weak and almost defenceless people in its expansionary and bribery (Petrocaribe) drive and threat to dismantling the Caribbean Community.
Venezuela is conducting a totally unlawful and aggressive war of attrit
