Now Guyana wants TT waters

There is a similarity of views between Guyana and Barbados in respect of their dissatisfaction with the delimitation treaty which Trinidad and Tobago signed with Venezuela. But Guyana’s president Bharrat Jagdeo sought to distance himself from the belligerent stance of the Barbados government, stressing after a meeting with Prime Minister Patrick Manning yesterday, that his government was not going to take an  adversarial position in pursuing  its national interests. The two leaders met at Whitehall yesterday. In fact, Jagdeo explained that he came to Port-of-Spain specifically to assure the Trinidad and Tobago population that he was not part of a conspiracy (with Barbados) to “harm the national interests” of Trinidad and Tobago. But the Guyana head of state made it clear that successive Guyana governments had always put on record the country’s opposition to the 1990 treaty and that it planned to defend its interests on this matter at the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
 
“We have an interest in that matter and Guyana will defend its interest,” he stated. Saying that the Guyana government  had to determine whether it was in that country’s interest to prosecute the matter separately and independently of Barbados, Jagdeo stated: “We will have to discuss with Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago  whether we may have to file a brief in the same process,” he said. He added that he was not sure Guyana would go through “the same arbitral process (along with Barbados) or another arbitral process.” On the treaty which Guyana signed with Barbados for the exploitation of each other’s exclusive economic zone in London on December 2, Jagdeo said there was no plot to conceal the agreement. He said he told Manning about the agreement in the VIP lounge in London. But it was not publicly disclosed  until last week because he was awaiting the ratification of the agreement by the Guyana Parliament. He also stressed that the Barbados/Guyana agreement, which came after two years of negotiations, was not a delimitation treaty, but an agreement for the exploitation of natural resources in the area where the two EEZs overlapped.

Jagdeo emphasised that the differences which emerged in Caricom would not lead to the demise of the integration movement. He said he spoke with Barbados PM Owen Arthur last week. He assured him that he had no ill-will to Trinidad and Tobago and that no trade sanctions would be implemented against Trinidad and Tobago products. Jagdeo, who stated his optimism that Caricom would be strengthened in the long run by these events,  added that the region had to find a way to settle problems in a non-adversarial way.