Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil de­nounced the UK for al­leged­ly in­ter­fer­ing in the land dis­pute be­tween Venezuela and Guyana and called the UK a for­mer “en­slav­ing em­pire”.

Yes­ter­day, the UK’s Min­is­ter for the Amer­i­c­as David Rut­ley ar­rived in Guyana where he of­fered his sup­port to Guyana which is cur­rent­ly in a tug-of-war with Venezuela over its oil rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion which Venezuela now claims.

A re­lease from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent of Guyana said that dis­cus­sions fo­cused on the con­tin­u­a­tion and ex­pan­sion of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the UK and Guyana, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas of sus­tain­able and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and se­cu­ri­ty.

On His X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count, Rut­ley post­ed a pho­to shak­ing hands with the Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and said the UK sup­ports Guyana’s “ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty” and the peo­ple of Guyana “de­serve to be free from threats to their coun­try.”

Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs an­gri­ly re­tal­i­at­ed on his X ac­count and post­ed in Eng­lish: “The for­mer in­vad­ing and en­slav­ing em­pire, which il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied the ter­ri­to­ry of Guayana Es­e­qui­ba and act­ed in a skill­ful and sneaky man­ner against the in­ter­ests of Venezuela, in­sists on in­ter­ven­ing in a ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy that they them­selves gen­er­at­ed.”

In the post, Gil al­so said this con­tro­ver­sy would be re­solved di­rect­ly be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

“The on­ly valid ac­tion of the Unit­ed King­dom will be the recog­ni­tion of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al law and the oblig­a­tions de­rived from the Gene­va Agree­ment of 1966. We will stop the new fil­i­bus­ter­ing that seeks to desta­bilise the re­gion.”

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Maduro and Ali met in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines last Thurs­day where both coun­tries promised not to use force to set­tle the Es­se­qui­bo land dis­pute.

The next meet­ing be­tween Guyana and Venezuela will be in the first quar­ter of 2024 in Brazil.

The state­ments signed by the two Pres­i­dents last Thurs­day said that “both states agreed to meet in Brazil with­in the next three months, or at an­oth­er agreed time to dis­cuss all mat­ters that have im­pact­ed on the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry.”