FOR THE first time in the 27-year history of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a summit of Heads of Government, starting today in St. Vincent, will face the challenge of responding to an unprecedented development between two member states of the 15-member Community. This challenge has to do with the use of force by Suriname in a dispute with neighbouring Guyana.These two member nations with an age-old territorial dispute inherited at the time of their independence from Britain (Guyana) and Holland (Suriname), are currently locked in a serious controversy involving oil drilling operations in disputed territorial waters in the Corentyne region. Dramatically, and without any prior attempt at dialogue, the Surinamese navy used two gunboats to forcefully evict on June 3 the Canadian-owned CGX Energy Inc., from a location where it was engaged in off-shore oil drilling on the basis of a concession it had obtained from Guyana in 1998 for oil exploration.
Suriname has justified its action on the ground that Guyana knowingly violated Surinamese territory in the granting of the concession. It is an assertion that Guyana has stoutly rejected as baseless and not consistent with international maritime law.
After three rounds of meetings at the level of Foreign Ministers, both parties failed to arrive at a solution that would have seen, as Guyana wanted, a return of the CGX oil rig to its original location, while the dispute over the concession and the wider territorial dispute are pursued at a technical and also at the highest level.
CARICOM is faced with the challenging problem of seeking to promote peaceful dialogue to the conflict between two member states without in any way compromising the fundamental principle of non-aggression in the resolution of disputes.
Guyana has reminded CARICOM that the use of force was contrary to the letter and spirit of a Heads of Government meeting in Belize in 1995 at which it had agreed to Suriname becoming a member of the Community, despite the territorial dispute between them. Unhappily, the Council of ministers, which is the second highest organ of CARICOM after the Heads of Government Conference, failed to condemn Suriname's act of aggression and instead referred the CGX dispute for consideration at the St. Vincent Summit.
Since then, and much to their credit, at least three Prime Ministers, those from St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda, have publicly spoken out against the use of force in the dispute and urged a speedy resumption of peaceful dialogue in accordance with an established tradition in CARICOM.
Now it is the turn of the 21st Summit itself with the gathering of all of the CARICOM leaders. No one is asking them to take sides in the dispute. They are simply being requested to condemn the use of force by one member state against another. If they fail to do so, they must understand the grave implications for future relations and how such a development could be exploited by others in this hemisphere with their own border controversies. Those of Belize and Guatemala and Venezuela and Guyana come readily to mind.
