GEORGETOWN.- The foreign ministers of Venezuela y Guyana meet this Thursday at Brazil to deal with the crisis Essequibowithout any of the governments having changed their position on the claim of this oil-rich territory.
The Foreign Minister of the Venezuelan regime, Yván Gil, will meet with his Guyanese counterpart Hugh Hilton Todd in a meeting that follows the commitment in December of Nicolás Maduro and President Irfaan Ali to avoid the use of force amid tensions that They raised fears of an armed conflict in the region.
Brazil, in fact, pointed out that the meeting will serve to “consolidate the region as an area of peace, cooperation and solidarity.”
Gil arrived in Brasilia this Wednesday for “a new stage of direct dialogue, of bilateral dialogue.”
“I think that the fact of reactivating this direct dialogue (…) is a success for diplomacy (…) because it removes any possibility of conflict beyond the territorial controversy that we have,” he told state television VTV.
At the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines summit held in December, it was agreed to hold a new presidential meeting in Brazil within three months.
“The meeting is a very important step in fulfilling what we agreed to in St. Vincent,” Ali said in Georgetown. “Talks between Guyana and Venezuela increase stability and peaceful environment,” she added.
After the December summit, tensions escalated within a few days with the arrival of a British warship in Guyanese waters, which Venezuela saw as a provocation and responded by mobilizing more than 5,600 men in military exercises near the disputed boundary. However, the situation did not escalate.
Venezuela maintains that Essequibo, a region of 160,000 km2 rich in natural resources, has been part of its territory since it was a colony of Spain and appeals to the Geneva agreement, signed in 1966, before the independence of Guyana from the United Kingdom, which established bases for a negotiated solution and annulled an 1899 award, which established the borders that Georgetown claims to be ratified by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Keep the peace
Although it is a century-old dispute, the dispute intensified in 2015 after the American oil company ExxonMobil discovered large deposits of crude oil in the area under claim. And tensions increased after the holding of a referendum on the sovereignty of Essequibo on December 3 in Venezuela, which promoted the creation of a formal state in that territory, seen by Georgetown – which administers it – as an attempt at annexation.
Maduro even created a military zone for this area of 125,000 inhabitants, present in the official military greeting: “The sun of Venezuela rises in Essequibo.”
For Iván Rojas, a Venezuelan internationalist, the meeting serves to maintain “open dialogue,” but will not address substantive negotiations.
“It is likely that it will simply focus on mutual assurance of peacekeeping. That is, this agreement exists so that there is constant communication between the parties during a moment of tension. Nothing more, nothing less than that,” explained the director of the Venezuelan Council of International Relations (Covri).
Gil assured that the work agenda involves “channeling all conversations within the framework of this agreement” in Geneva and “reviewing everything that has to do with the framework of this international agreement, especially in maritime spaces that have not been delimited”.
“Review and work to prevent third powers or large-scale imperial or military powers from getting involved in the controversy,” he added.
Georgetown has insisted that these meetings will not address the territorial dispute, which will be the domain of the ICJ. Ali rather said that the meeting would serve to outline an agenda with issues related to “trade, climate, energy security…improving our neighborly relationship.”
“All of these things are crucial for a stable and peaceful environment,” he explained.
Source: With information from AFP
