Guyana’s new am­bas­sador to Venezuela, Dr. Richard Van West-Charles, has pre­sent­ed his cre­den­tials to Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and pledg­ing to work to­wards ad­vanc­ing the re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion, said that Dr. Van West-Charles had pre­sent­ed his cre­den­tials dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny held at the Mi­raflo­res Pres­i­den­tial Palace on Tues­day.

“Am­bas­sador Van West-Charles con­veyed greet­ings from His Ex­cel­len­cy Dr. Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, Pres­i­dent of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana, and the peo­ple of Guyana. He ex­pressed his com­mit­ment to work to­wards ad­vanc­ing the re­la­tions be­tween Guyana and Venezuela,” the state­ment said.

It said that Pres­i­dent Maduro re­quest­ed the Guyanese diplo­mat “to con­vey a mes­sage of high re­gard to Pres­i­dent Ali, stat­ing his great re­spect for the Pres­i­dent and the peo­ple of Guyana.

“The pre­sen­ta­tion of cre­den­tials sig­ni­fies the com­mit­ment of Guyana and Venezuela to up­hold diplo­mat­ic norms and pur­sue av­enues for en­hanced bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion,” the state­ment said.

The two coun­tries have an on­go­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute over the own­er­ship of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, which makes up about two-thirds of Guyana and is home to 125,000 of the coun­try’s 800,000 cit­i­zens.

Both Guyana and Venezuela have made pre­sen­ta­tions to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) re­lat­ing to the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award, which es­tab­lished the bor­der be­tween Venezuela and the then-British Guiana, con­firmed as legal­ly en­force­able.

Last De­cem­ber, Guyana and Venezuela’s lead­ers end­ed a meet­ing in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines agree­ing “di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly” not to threat­en or use force against one an­oth­er in any cir­cum­stances, as they con­tin­ue to seek a res­o­lu­tion to the bor­der dis­pute be­tween them.

The Joint De­c­la­ra­tion of Ar­gyle for Di­a­logue and Peace be­tween Guyana and Venezuela, al­so in­di­cat­ed that the two coun­tries agreed that “any con­tro­ver­sies” be­tween them will be re­solved in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law, in­clud­ing the Gene­va Agree­ment dat­ed Feb. 17, 1966.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Feb 21, CMC

CMC/gt/ir/2024