PM Owen Arthur, no ‘clever fish-hooks’ please

THE EDITOR: To Prime Minister Owen Arthur, upon reading his “formal statement” of February 16, I am forced to say “Don’t try that!!” Barbados proposes to Trinidad and Tobago that, at the February 18 meeting, the parties (I quote) “make every effort to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature, without prejudice to the final delimitation, relating to traditional fishing as conducted historically by Barbadians to the north of the territorial sea of the island of Tobago” Newsday February 17, 2004. I know our diplomats will read every word carefully — but I comment (a) note “traditional” and “historically” and that (b) Trinidad and Tobago the unitary state has an Exclusive Economic Zone, but in international law has not “territorial sea of the island of Tobago.”

Please, Mr Arthur, don’t try that. It is setting a key agenda item in terminology framed solely to set a trap. I do hope that our delegation will not bite this clever fish-hook. In 1990 I took a personal and civic-minded interest in the Robinson/NAR moves to discuss and conclude the Venezuela-Trinidad Boundary Delimitation Treaty of that year. Two members of the PNM in Opposition, Patrick Manning and Keith Rowley, did express public doubts and reservations on many occasions at the time. In our open technical seminar at the UWI Institute of International Relations, and at other meetings, a glaring fact emerged: That in order to allow Venezuela a sea corridor via the Orinoco-Essequibo shelf, our country’s Cabinet did cede national territory underwater to permit boundary survey adjustments.

Please read that again. At the time and even now, my position is - “Only the Parliament of the country, not the Cabinet, can confirm a treaty ceding even one square metre of our sovereign territory.” Accepting Prime Minister Manning’s statement that the 1990 Venezuela treaty is now registered internationally and can hardly be rescinded after 14 years, I must respectfully caution him — and any future administration: At the end of the UNCLOS arbitration and award, bring that treaty to Parliament. Please do not repeat the 1990 action of the Robinson Cabinet. (The UNCLOS arbitration might even properly ask: Was the 1990 treaty validly executed under the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago?) Finally, can the country speak as one undivided Trinidad and Tobago? A lot will depend on the statesmanship of Mr Manning. We have now learned more from Barbados than from him. And so, it is necessary for Mr Manning in Parliament, to read a comprehensive statement into the record. (One could hear Dr Eric Williams doing that.) We also invite Dr Bhoe Tewarie of UWI to convene an open technical seminar on “The Barbados Maritime Question - Law and Fact as seen by Trinidad and Tobago.” These two steps will do very much to educate and unite the country on our extremely important issue.

ARTHUR L MCSHINE
former Parvin Fellow
Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs Princeton University