Venezuela said Sat­ur­day it will con­tin­ue to de­ploy near­ly 6,000 troops un­til a British mil­i­tary ves­sel sent to neigh­bour­ing Guyana leaves the wa­ters off the coast of the two South Amer­i­can na­tions.

In a video post­ed to X, Venezue­lan De­fense Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no ap­peared sur­round­ed by mil­i­tary of­fi­cers in front of a marked up map of Venezuela and Guyana, a for­mer British colony.

Padri­no said the forces are “safe­guard­ing our na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.”

“Armed forces have been de­ployed not just in the east of the coun­try, but across the en­tire ter­ri­to­ry,” he said. “They will be there un­til this British im­pe­ri­al­ist boat leaves the dis­put­ed wa­ters be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.”

The De­fense Min­istry con­firmed to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that the video was made at a mil­i­tary base in Venezuela’s cap­i­tal, Cara­cas.

The video comes af­ter weeks of ten­sions be­tween the two coun­tries over Venezuela’s re­newed claim to a re­gion in Guyana known as Es­se­qui­bo, a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed stretch of land rough­ly the size of Flori­da that is rich in oil and min­er­als. Op­er­a­tions gen­er­ate some $1 bil­lion a year for the im­pov­er­ished coun­try of near­ly 800,000 peo­ple that saw its econ­o­my ex­pand by near­ly 60% in the first half of this year.

Venezuela has long ar­gued it was cheat­ed out of the ter­ri­to­ry when Eu­ro­peans and the U.S. set the bor­der. Guayana, which has con­trolled the zone for decades, says the orig­i­nal agree­ment was legal­ly bind­ing and the dis­pute should be de­cid­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in the Nether­lands.

The cen­tu­ry-old dis­pute was re­cent­ly reignit­ed with the dis­cov­ery of oil in Guyana and has es­ca­lat­ed since Venezuela re­port­ed that its cit­i­zens vot­ed in a Dec. 3 ref­er­en­dum to claim Es­se­qui­bo, which makes up two-thirds of its small­er neigh­bour.

Crit­ics of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro say the so­cial­ist leader is us­ing the ten­sions to dis­tract from in­ter­nal tur­moil and stoke na­tion­al­ism in the lead up to pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next year.

In re­cent weeks, the lead­ers of Guyana and Venezuela promised in a tense meet­ing that nei­ther side would use threats or force against the oth­er but failed to reach agree­ment on how to ad­dress the bit­ter dis­pute.

Ten­sions came to an­oth­er head with Fri­day’s ar­rival in Guyana of the Roy­al Navy pa­trol ship HMS Trent, which of­fi­cials said had been tak­ing part in an op­er­a­tion com­bat­ting drug smug­gling in the Caribbean near the coast of Guyana. Most re­cent­ly used to in­ter­cept pi­rates and drug smug­glers off Africa, the ship is equipped with can­nons and a land­ing pad for he­li­copters and drones and can car­ry around 50 marines.

Maduro said the ship’s de­ploy­ment vi­o­lates the shaky agree­ment be­tween Venezuela and Guyana, call­ing its pres­ence a threat to his coun­try. In re­sponse, Maduro or­dered Venezuela’s mil­i­tary — in­clud­ing air and naval forces — to con­duct ex­er­cis­es near the dis­put­ed area.

“We be­lieve in diplo­ma­cy, in di­a­logue and in peace, but no one is go­ing to threat­en Venezuela,” Maduro said. “This is an un­ac­cept­able threat to any sov­er­eign coun­try in Latin Amer­i­ca.”

Guyana’s gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed Maduro’s claims, with of­fi­cials say­ing that the vis­it was a planned ac­tiv­i­ty aimed at im­prov­ing the na­tion’s de­fense ca­pa­bil­i­ties and that the ship’s vis­it would con­tin­ue as sched­uled.

Dur­ing talks ear­li­er in De­cem­ber, Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said his na­tion re­served its right to work with part­ners to en­sure the de­fense of his coun­try. Guyana has a mil­i­tary of on­ly 3,000 sol­diers, 200 sailors and four small pa­trol boats known as Bar­racu­d­as, while Venezuela has about 235,000 ac­tive mil­i­tary per­son­nel in its army, air force, navy and na­tion­al guard.

“Noth­ing that we do or have done is threat­en­ing Venezuela,” Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, told re­porters in George­town, the na­tion’s cap­i­tal. —MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by MEGAN JANET­SKY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press