Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared her gov­ern­ment'ssup­port of Guyana's claim in its present mar­itime wa­ters dis­pute with Venezuela, a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­firmed her sup­port to Guyana's Pres­i­dent David Granger dur­ing the 36th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Last month, the gov­ern­ment of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Madurois­sued a de­cree claim­ing mar­itime wa­ters that en­com­pass Guyana's ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone. With­in the wa­ters in dis­pute is a US ex­plo­ration com­pa­ny which re­cent­ly an­nounced that it had found min­er­als on the seabed in­di­cat­ing there may be large de­posits of oil be­neath.

Dur­ing dis­cus­sions at the Cari­com meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­firmed T&T's com­mon in­ter­ests with both Guyana and Venezuela.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said that Venezuela's de­cree is a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al laws of the sea and ex­pressed sup­port for Guyana's claim.

Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ka­malesh Shar­ma al­so de­cried Venezuela's de­cree­and sup­port­ed Guyana's sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty.