UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors Friday on the fast-escalating row between South American neighbours Venezuela and Guyana over a disputed oil-rich region.
Delegates left the meeting — which took place at Guyana’s request — with roses offered by Ecuador, which chairs the Council this month. None made statements to reporters.
Guyana says Caracas’ move on the oil-rich Essequibo region, disputed for more than a century, “threatens international peace and security.”
World leaders called for calm as Venezuela decried joint US-Guyana military exercises as a “provocation” and vowed to push ahead with the “recovery” of the region, which both neighbours claim as their own.
Fears of the conflict blowing up have deepened after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government held a controversial referendum Sunday on the fate of Essequibo.
The region has been administered by Guyana for more than a century and is the subject of border litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
It makes up about two-thirds of Guyanese territory and is home to 125,000 of the country’s 800,000 citizens, but is also claimed by Venezuela.
Controversy has simmered since 2015 when US oil giant ExxonMobil, operating under licenses from Guyana, discovered vast oil reserves in the area.
“Guyana and ExxonMobil will have to sit down with us face to face sooner rather than later,” Maduro said Friday during a ceremony in front of the Miraflores presidential palace, where he showed a map of Venezuela that included Essequibo as official territory.
Washington provoked an angry response from Caracas on Thursday by announcing via the embassy in Georgetown that it would hold joint “flight operations within Guyana” as part of “routine engagement and operations to enhance security partnership” with its ally.
“This unfortunate provocation by the United States in favour… of ExxonMobil in Guyana is another step in the wrong direction,” Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said on X, formerly Twitter.
In response, Guyanese Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo said Venezuela “is not going to succeed, now or ever” at taking the region.
“Every single movement that Venezuelans make, particularly in the proximity of our borders, is tracked, every single one of them,” he said. – AFP
