Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Yván Gil. Photo: Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/File photo.
Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Yván Gil stated that Venezuela has never intimidated or threatened anyone, much less Guyana. “What we are doing is defending our historical rights over the Guayana Esequiba, a territory that belongs to us, according to history and the Liberator Simón Bolívar’s documents,” he stated.
He made this statement on Friday, May 23, in response to his Guyanese counterpart Hugh Todd’s comment that Guyana “will not let itself be intimidated or threatened by Venezuela.”
In this regard, Gil pointed out that Venezuela has indeed received threats from the US Southern Command, recklessly involved by Guyana in the Essequibo dispute that does not concern the US. He also urged the Guyanese government to sit down to negotiations with Venezuela. “It is not possible to talk about peace or legality while ignoring the only path agreed upon between the parties,” Gil stated.
He confirmed that Guayana Esequiba belongs to Venezuela and that the nation will assert this through legal and peaceful means.
“Guyana must respect the Geneva Agreement of 1966, which obliges it to negotiate with Venezuela. Any other route is an adventure with no future, without any satisfactory result for any of the parties,” Gil stressed.
On Wednesday, May 21, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro reiterated that Venezuela’s will to recover its historical territorial rights in Guayana Esequiba is unwavering.
He branded the president of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, and his government as “slave foremen of ExxonMobil.”
Likewise, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López decried that there is a plan to take the Essequibo territory from Venezuela “by force.”
He referred to recent statements issued by the Guyanese government regarding alleged violent actions against its military personnel “on the de facto line along the Cuyuní River.”
“This has already happened twice, and has been thoroughly investigated by the Attorney General’s Office,” Padrino López said on Wednesday, May 21.
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Padrino López called this a “deliberate act fabricated within the walls of the Southern Command and the CIA to provoke Venezuela, to present it before the international community as an aggressor State.” He urged everyone not to fall for provocations.
“There is a deliberate plan to take the Essequibo from us by force and of course we are going to be vigilant of the false flags, maneuvers, manipulations of truth to make us look like an aggressor State before the international community, the big aggressor State against a smaller State,” the defense minister commented.
He stressed that Venezuela has never been an aggressor against any nation. “Historically, we did not leave our borders if not to give freedom, to project freedom, consensus, integration among nations, brotherhood, to form emerging blocks of geopolitical power in the world,” Minister Padrino López remarked. “That is what Venezuela does with its Bolivarian diplomacy of peace, never to attack or dispossess. We have no imperialist blood of dispossession. On the contrary, we are anti-imperialist.”
The dispute over the Essequibo intensified after the discovery of oil deposits in the region by the US-based oil multinational ExxonMobil in 2015. Guyana filed a case before the ICJ in 2018, asking for recognition of the illegal “Arbitration Award” of 1899 by which Britain had stolen the Essequibo region from Venezuela. However, Venezuela questions the jurisdiction of the ICJ and recognizes the Geneva Agreement 1966 as the only mechanism with which to settle the dispute.
On December 3, 2023, Venezuela held a referendum in which it consulted the population on the creation of a new state in the Essequibo and the granting of Venezuelan citizenship to its inhabitants. The “Yes” option received more than 90% of votes in that referendum. Accordingly, Guayana Esequiba was constitutionally recognized as the 24th state of Venezuela, changing its status from the earlier “zone under claim.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Carlos Eduardo Suárez
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
