December 14, 2023

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — The leaders of Guyana and Venezuela were preparing for a tense meeting Thursday in which the nations of the region will try to settle a long-running territorial dispute that worsened following Venezuelans approved in a referendum to claim two thirds of the territory of the neighboring country.

Under pressure from their partners in the region, the president of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, and that of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, agreed to meet at the Argyle international airport, on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. The prime ministers of Barbados, Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago will attend the meeting.

The meeting seeks to ease tensions around Essequibo, a vast oil- and mineral-rich border region that represents much of Guyana’s territory but which Venezuela claims as its own.

Following the popular consultation, Maduro ordered Venezuelan state companies to explore and exploit oil, gas and mines in Essequibo. And both sides have put their armies on alert.

It was not clear whether the summit would yield any agreement or even manage to reduce the border controversy.

The president of Guyana has repeated that the dispute should be resolved only at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands.

“We are firm on this issue and are not open to discussions,” Ali wrote Tuesday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Venezuela insists that Essequibo was part of its territory during the Spanish colonial period and alleges that the Geneva Agreement signed in 1966 between Caracas, the United Kingdom and Guyana — whose colonial name was British Guiana — annulled the borders drawn in 1899 by international arbitrators.

In a letter sent on Tuesday to Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ali said the Geneva Agreement states that it is the International Court of Justice that must resolve any border dispute.

The Guyanese president was also concerned regarding what he described as “inaccurate statements” by Maduro in his own letter to Gonsalves.

He refuted Maduro’s description of the oil concessions granted by Guyana as belonging to “a maritime zone yet to be delimited.” Ali stated that all oil blocks “are located within Guyanese waters in accordance with international law, which includes the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

The president of Guyana rejected what, according to him, Maduro described as “meddling by the United States Southern Command, which has begun operations in the disputed territory.”

In recent days, the US Southern Command conducted flight operations inside Guyana.

“Any claim that there is a military operation directed once morest Venezuela in any part of Guyanese territory is false, misleading and provocative,” Ali said in his letter to Gonsalves.

Maduro’s letter to Gonsalves repeated the Venezuelan argument that the border drawn in 1899 was “the result of a plan” between the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, he stated that the dispute “must be resolved amicably in a manner acceptable to both parties.”

The Venezuelan president also referred to the December 3 referendum on the membership of Essequibo, which has vast oil deposits off its coasts, to the country.

The summit between Ali and Maduro is scheduled to last one day, although many expect the disagreement to continue into next year.