Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of De­fence Vladimir Padri­no López has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­fan Ali’s state­ment, ac­cus­ing the Span­ish-speak­ing coun­try of en­ter­ing Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters with a navy ves­sel on Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to López, a four star gen­er­al, the coun­try was ready to re­spond to any threat.

He said Sat­ur­day’s con­tro­ver­sial mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion was aimed at safe­guard­ing the in­tegri­ty of Venezuela’s mar­itime and land ter­ri­to­ries.

“The Bo­li­var­i­an Navy has been able to ver­i­fy through satel­lite im­ages, the pres­ence of 28 for­eign drilling ves­sels and tankers in the dis­put­ed area, which, with the con­sent of the Guyanese gov­ern­ment and fla­grant­ly vi­o­lat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Law, are car­ry­ing out ac­tiv­i­ties of ex­ploita­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of hy­dro­car­bons that lie un­der­ground.

“It is im­per­a­tive to re­mem­ber that the afore­men­tioned dis­pute has a valid le­gal in­stru­ment in force, de­posit­ed in the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the Unit­ed Na­tions, which gov­erns its prac­ti­cal, po­lit­i­cal and sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tion: the Gene­va Agree­ment. There­fore, Guyana has no le­gal ba­sis or le­git­i­ma­cy to uni­lat­er­al­ly dis­pose of a space where it can­not ex­er­cise sov­er­eign­ty or ju­ris­dic­tion.

“We are a coun­try at­tacked by prox­ies of North Amer­i­can im­pe­ri­al­ism such as Exxon Mo­bil,” he said.

López com­plained, in a press re­lease from the De­fence Min­istry, that some re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions had tak­en up bi­ased and par­tial po­si­tions.

They ac­cused these coun­tries of seek­ing to pro­mote hos­til­i­ty and war­like poli­cies.

On Sat­ur­day, Venezuela faced in­ter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion for its ac­tions, with the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Amer­i­can States and The Unit­ed States Bu­reau of West­ern Hemi­sphere Af­fairs mak­ing state­ments.

“Yes­ter­day, Venezuela vi­o­lat­ed Guyana’s mar­itime ter­ri­to­ry in a provoca­tive act. The UK is stead­fast in its sup­port for Guyana’s in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and urges Venezuela to re­frain from such ac­tions,” a tweet from UK For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my stat­ed on Sun­day.

Mean­while, a group of eleven for­mer Pres­i­dents of Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries penned a con­dem­na­tion let­ter, as mem­bers of the Latin Amer­i­can foun­da­tion ‘Grupo Lib­er­tad y Democ­ra­cia.’

In the press re­lease is­sued on Sat­ur­day, the group cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject­ed the in­cur­sion, say­ing it rep­re­sent­ed ‘an un­ac­cept­able vi­o­la­tion of Guyanese sov­er­eign­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al rights that should be to­tal­ly and firm­ly con­demned.’

“El Grupo Lib­er­tad y Democ­ra­cia is mak­ing a call to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to re­spect the sov­er­eign­ty of Guyana and to en­sure it is not usurped by the Nico­las Maduro dic­ta­tor­ship that is try­ing to steal the nat­ur­al rich­es of a coun­try,” the group said.

The let­ter was signed by for­mer Pres­i­dents of Ecuador, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma, Paraguay, Ecuador, Puer­to Ri­co, Spain, Mex­i­co, Ar­genti­na and Bo­livia.