CARIBBEAN:
Boundary Spat Threatens to Delay Common Market

Peter Richards


PORT OF SPAIN, (IPS) - A dispute over a 14-year-old deal between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela over maritime rights is threatening to damage cordial relations between two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states as well as torpedo plans to establish a single market in the region.

Barbados on Monday announced it had lodged a complaint with the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS), a move that Trinidad and Tobago said Friday was done in a clandestine manner, as the parties were still at the negotiating table.

”This development, I regret to say, can easily be construed as being indicative of a lack of good faith, as well as inconsistent with the spirit of the Caribbean Community that we are in the process of fashioning,” Trinidad and Tobago Foreign Minister Knowlson Gift said in a radio broadcast.

At the centre of the dispute is a 1990 treaty between Trinidad and Venezuela, which Barbados claims has no basis in international law because it gives those countries an enormous part of its maritime territory, as well as one-third of the land territory and a large chunk of the maritime area of tiny South American (and CARICOM) nation Guyana, Venezuela's neighbour.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning told a news conference Thursday it is impossible for his administration to reverse the treaty, adding that any unilateral move would ”create enormous problems for ourselves” with Caracas and other Latin American countries.

”That's the reality of the situation as it now stands,” Manning said, adding that ”experts” have informed him it would be unwise to open discussions with Venezuela on the matter.

But Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur says he regards a settlement of the maritime boundaries as ”a prerequisite for a lasting solution to the fisheries matter” that has ruffled relations between the neighbours since the last fishing agreement expired in 1991.

On Friday, Trinidad and Tobago's Coast Guard warned it would arrest fishermen from Barbados if they follow the advice of that country's attorney general, who reportedly urged her countrymen to ”boldly go where they have gone before”.

On Thursday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez paid an official visit to Guyana's capital Georgetown.

The communiqué issued later said Chavez and his Guyana counterpart, Bharrat Jagdeo, ”reiterated their countries' commitment to the good offices process”.

Chavez added that a solution to the boundaries problem ”does not include an invasion of Guyana's territory”.

On Apr. 18, 1990, Port of Spain and Caracas signed the Trinidad and Tobago Maritime Delimitation Treaty, which grants both nations access to significant maritime energy reserves.

The treaty establishes the maritime boundaries between the two oil rich countries in the Atlantic Ocean and local bodies of water.

It also provides for the exploitation of maritime resources by either party.

Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela signed agreements last August to develop maritime cross-border energy reserves.

The memorandum of understanding lists the conditions under which companies would be allowed to carry out exploration and development in the oil and gas-rich offshore area south of Trinidad along the maritime border with Venezuela.

A letter of intent outlines greater bilateral co-operation between the countries, and calls for the appointment of technical teams to evaluate the feasibility of a number of opportunities, including joint refining and commercialisation of crude oil destined for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

It will also allow Venezuela to participate in the development of and supply of gas to the intra-Caribbean natural gas pipeline project being developed by Port of Spain, and the re-activation of an oil spill contingency plan between the nations.

But Barbados insists that the Venezuela-Trinidad agreement is neither binding nor relevant to any third state.

In addition, in a prepared statement Arthur said he could not be ”complicit in any agreement, which threatens to usurp territory, maritime or land that is contrary to international law, let alone the national interest of any CARICOM state, including Barbados”.

Bridgetown announced Tuesday that it was expanding the list of goods entering the island that would be subject to import licences.

It said the measure was not directed at Port of Spain, but the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association (TTMA) said the move could have ”significant negative effects on the relations and economies of both countries”.

The Barbados leader also indicated that while his island remained firmly committed to the forthcoming Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), the current dispute could affect its participation in the regional arrangement.

The region's states have agreed a common market is essential if the Caribbean is to prosper in the changing global economic environment, and benefit from trade agreements like the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The CSME is supposed to be launched by 2004, with Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica the three countries that have expressed a readiness to move forward.

”We believe this is a test case as to whether we should go forward together or not at all,” Arthur added.

Political scientist Neville Duncan said the dispute creates a clear case for the region's governments to speed up the inauguration of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which will replace the London-based Privy Council as the region's final court of appeal.

”It is the kind of issue that if we had a Caribbean Court of Justice we could take it there for a settlement, rather than an international body or regime to deal with it,” he told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

The CCJ will hear and settle disputes that may arise in the interpretation and application of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, which established CARICOM.

The court is expected to be inaugurated later this year.