CARACAS.- The regime of Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday that he agreed to sit with his pair of Guyana to address the territorial dispute over Essequiboafter a proposal that arose in telephone conversations with the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other high regional authorities.
According to a statement released by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, Maduro held talks with Lula da Silva, the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Pro Tempore President of the Community of Latin American Caribbean States (CELAC), Ralph Gonsalvez, and the Secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres.
In those conversations Venezuela “received the proposal to hold a high-level meeting with the Cooperative Republic of Guyana,” said the statement, which did not specify the date for the meeting and did not mention whether the proposal had been accepted by Guyana.
Guterres, for his part, committed to promoting “a direct dialogue between the parties” and in favor of a solution to the conflict, the foreign ministry added.
He noted that Venezuela “assumes this call with approval and commitment,” in order to “maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, without interference from external actors.”
However, in the statement the government ratifies its position on “the unquestionable sovereign rights of Venezuela over Guyana Esequiba.”
This announcement does not stop the process in the Inter-American Court of Justice (ICJ) of the United Nations, before which Guyana demanded in 2018 the recognition of an arbitration award from 1899 that determined English dominion over the disputed territory, when it was still a colony. British.
Venezuela ignores the jurisdiction of the ICJ and assures that the conflict must be resolved under the Geneva Agreement of 1966, when London admitted its claim, giving rise to a possible diplomatic and satisfactory agreement for the parties.
Security Council takes no action
The Security Council of United Nations took no immediate action at an emergency meeting held Friday behind closed doors at the request of Guyanaafter the referendum held by Venezuela to claim the vast region of Essequibo which makes up a large part of its neighboring country.
But some diplomats said the general view among the 15-member Council was that international law must be respected, including the U.N. Charter’s requirement that all member nations respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of any other nation. and that the parties respect the orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and his role as a referee.
A possible press release was circulated among Council members, and some said they needed to consult with capitals, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the consultations were private.
At the beginning of the meeting, the undersecretary of political affairs of the HIMRosemary DiCarlo, briefed the Council on the dispute, the diplomats said.
In a letter to the president of the Security Council requesting the emergency meeting, Guyana’s Foreign Minister Hugh Hilton Todd accused Venezuela of violating the UN Charter by attempting to take its territory.
The letter recounted the arbitration between then-British Guiana and Venezuela in 1899, and the formal demarcation of their border in a 1905 agreement. For more than 60 years, it said, Venezuela accepted the border, but in 1962 it challenged the 1899 arbitration that fixed it.
Diplomatic discord over the Essequibo region has worsened since then, but intensified in 2015 after ExxonMobil announced that it had found large quantities of oil off its coast.
The dispute grew even more when the Venezuelan ruler, Nicolas Maduro, held a referendum last Sunday in which Venezuelans approved their claim to sovereignty over Essequibo. Voters were asked whether they supported establishing a state in the disputed territory, granting Venezuelan citizenship to current and future residents of the area, and rejecting the jurisdiction of the United Nations’ highest court to resolve the disagreement between South American countries. Maduro subsequently ordered Venezuelan state companies to immediately begin exploration in the disputed region.
The area, 159,500 square kilometers (61,600 square miles), represents two-thirds of Guyana. But Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, has always considered the Essequibo as its own because the region was within its borders during the Spanish colonial period.
Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, accused Venezuela of defying a ruling handed down on December 1 by the ICJ. It ordered Venezuela to take no action until the court rules on the two countries’ competing claims, a process that is expected to take years.
The Maduro regime condemned Ali’s statement, accusing Guyana of acting irresponsibly and giving the green light to the US Army’s Southern Command to enter Essequibo.
Source: With information from AP
