2023-12-10 00:32:00
The presidents of Venezuela and Guyana will meet next week in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines amid high tensions over a territorial dispute between both countries over the Essequibo, which has reached the United Nations Security Council.
The prime minister of the host country, Ralph Gonsalves, reported in a letter addressed to the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his Guyanese counterpart, Irfaan Ali, that the meeting will be held on December 14 at 10:00 a.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT) on that Caribbean island. .
“Given the events and circumstances surrounding the territorial dispute (…) we have assessed, in the interest of all (…), the urgent need to deescalate the conflict and institute an adequate dialogue, face to face, between the presidents of Guyana and Venezuela,” the text noted. “Both (presidents) have been in favor of this position in the search for peaceful coexistence.”
The meeting is promoted by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), of which Gonsalves is president pro-tempore, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
Maduro reported earlier on this bilateral meeting, which, at the request of both presidents, will be attended by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“I am activating the Bolivarian Peace Diplomacy to the maximum, always in defense of the historical rights of Venezuela. Once again we will defeat the lies, the provocations and the threats,” Maduro wrote on the X network.
“I remain firm that the controversy is before the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and is not up for negotiations and that will not change,” Ali told AFP.
Venezuela and Guyana have disputed the Essequibo territory for more than a century, but tensions have soared since the Maduro government held a controversial referendum last Sunday in which 95% of voters supported declaring Venezuela as the legitimate owner of the region, according to official results.
Countries in South America, as well as Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States called in these days for detente and a peaceful solution.
“The greatest misfortune”
Lula had a conversation earlier with Maduro, in which he urged him not to take “unilateral measures” that would intensify the dispute and reinforce his military presence on his northern border.
The Venezuelan government indicated in a statement that its president also spoke with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who “committed to promoting efforts in favor of direct dialogue between the parties,” according to the statement. from Venezuela.
The territorial dispute over Essequibo is now in the hands of the ICJ, whose jurisdiction Venezuela does not recognize.
And although both countries have ruled out a conflict, bilateral tension reached the Security Council, which addressed the issue behind closed doors on Friday – at the request of Guyana – in a meeting that ended without comment.
“The greatest misfortune of South America is that a war broke out between its peoples,” wrote Colombian President Gustavo Petro in X. “Venezuela and Guyana must de-escalate the conflict, I invite the governments of South America to build a mediation team “.
For more than a century Guyana has administered the Essequibo, but Venezuela has claimed it for decades.
Venezuela maintains that Essequibo is part of its territory, as in 1777, when it was a colony of Spain. He appeals to the Geneva agreement, signed in 1966, before Guyana’s independence from the United Kingdom, which laid the foundations for a negotiated solution and annulled an 1899 award.
Guyana, for its part, defends the 1899 award and wants the ICJ to ratify it.
The struggle was revived when in 2015 the American energy giant ExxonMobil discovered enormous reserves of crude oil in the area. Guyana, with 800,000 inhabitants, was left with estimated reserves of 11 billion barrels of crude oil, the highest per capita in the world.
With this potential, Venezuela began to insist on its demand and since last Sunday’s referendum, Maduro ordered the state oil company PDVSA to issue licenses to authorize the extraction of crude oil in the region.
Similarly, Maduro decreed that Tumeremo, a town in the state of Bolívar (southeast), bordering the area under claim, be the capital of the eventual state of Guayana Esequiba, and opened an office of the identification agency (Saime) so that the inhabitants of that region can claim their nationality and identity document.
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