evidence: The Netherlands could not have bequeathed to Suriname at that country’s independence on 25th November 1975 what it did not possess. Guyana is confident that the boundary between Guyana and Suriname was definitively established by 1936. There is an agreement as to what constitutes the territory of Guyana and what constitutes the territory of Suriname despite the fact that there is no formal treaty that encapsulates that agreement. Suriname, in the absence of a formal treaty, sought to seize Guyana’s territory. Its claim was based on an arbitrary, municipal, legislative resolution passed in October 1965 by which the Staten changed the name of Guyana’s New River to ‘Boven Corantijin’ or Upper Corentyne. The President of the Republic of Suriname told that country’s National Assembly last month that the New River Zone (Tigri) issue will be placed "back on the agenda." The meaning of that statement is unclear. Inter-state relations over the past 50 years have encountered testing times. The Suriname government in Operation Schoon Schip (Clean Sweep) in 1985 expelled over 5,000 Guyanese (and Haitian) workers, on the pretext of ‘national security’.