The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has re­buked Guyana for al­leged­ly open­ing up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing mil­i­tary bases in Es­se­qui­bo for the Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand.

A re­lease from Venezuela sup­plied to Guardian Me­dia by Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, ac­cused Guyana of al­low­ing US mil­i­tary bases in Es­se­qui­bo. 

Cit­ing Guyana’s co­op­er­a­tion with Exxon Mo­bil, Venezuela con­demned the per­ceived threat to re­gion­al peace due to oil rights grant­ed in a dis­put­ed sea area.

Re­spond­ing to a state­ment made by Guyanese pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, Venezuela claimed that Pres­i­dent Ali had reck­less­ly giv­en the green light for the pres­ence of the Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand to oc­cu­py Es­se­qui­bo.

“Guyana, act­ing un­der the man­date of US transna­tion­al Exxon Mo­bil, has threat­ened the zone of peace by al­low­ing oil ex­ploita­tion rights to Exxon Mo­bil over a sea area pend­ing de­lim­i­ta­tion with Venezuela,” the re­lease said.

Venezuela urged the Guyanese gov­ern­ment to pur­sue di­rect di­a­logue through the Gene­va Agree­ment rather than en­gage in er­rat­ic, threat­en­ing and risky be­hav­iour.

Mean­while, the Chan­cel­lor of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela Yvan Gill con­firmed that di­a­logue took place on Wednes­day.

Gill wrote: “(Guyana’s) For­eign Min­is­ter Hugh Todd held a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with For­eign Min­is­ter Yvan Gil to dis­cuss the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy, fol­low­ing the con­sul­ta­tive ref­er­en­dum.”

A state­ment post­ed on X not­ed: “The Venezue­lan side took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to up­date the gov­ern­ment of Guyana on the over­whelm­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar con­sul­ta­tion which re­sult­ed in an un­ap­peal­able man­date for the Venezue­lan in­sti­tu­tions on the route to fol­low for the set­tle­ment of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy, which is the Gene­va Agree­ment signed be­tween the par­ties in 1966.”

Venezuela has de­fied a rul­ing of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice which last Fri­day or­dered Venezuela not to take any ac­tion to chal­lenge, dis­rupt or in­ter­fere with Guyana’s long-stand­ing con­trol and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion which con­sti­tutes more than two-thirds of Guyana.

A day lat­er, Venezuela said it “does not recog­nise the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court Jus­tice to set­tle the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy over the Guyana Es­e­qui­bo, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the ex­is­tence of the Gene­va Agree­ment of 1966.”

The 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment states that in case Venezuela and Guyana fail to re­solve the bor­der dis­pute peace­ful­ly, “they shall re­fer the de­ci­sion as to the means of set­tle­ment to an ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan up­on which they both agree or, fail­ing agree­ment on this point, to the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions.” 

This is ex­act­ly what Guyana did when it brought the mat­ter be­fore the ICJ. Guyana has amassed sup­port from the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), Brazil, the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed Na­tions and oth­ers. The dis­pute has brought the Caribbean on edge with some po­lit­i­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts pre­dict­ing a pos­si­ble war.