(United Nations) The United Nations Security Council, which met “urgently” behind closed doors on Friday to discuss the crisis between Venezuela and Guyana over the Essequibo, a disputed oil-rich region, n has not commented publicly on the situation.
At the request of Guyana, the Security Council met at 3 p.m. local time (3 p.m. Eastern time). But its members did not make a statement and no press release will be released.
The two countries continue to exchange harsh statements around this 160,000 km zone2 under Guyanese administration, claimed for decades by Venezuela.
On Friday, Russia in turn called for a “peaceful” solution. This question “must be resolved in a spirit of good neighborliness, by finding peaceful solutions acceptable to all,” declared the spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova.
Russia is an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who supported his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin from the early hours of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow has become a major partner of Venezuela due to US sanctions hitting the state since 2018 and the disputed re-election of Nicolas Maduro for a second term that the United States, the European Union and other countries in the region do not recognize .
“If there is one thing we do not want, it is a war in South America,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insisted on Thursday. Thursday evening, the main South American countries had urged “both parties to dialogue and the search for a peaceful solution” to “avoid unilateral initiatives which could worsen” the situation.
Tension has been rising since the discovery of significant oil reserves by the American company ExxonMobil in 2015 and calls for tenders from Guyana for exploitation in the area.
The referendum on Essequibo organized on Sunday in Venezuela was an accelerator. According to official figures – contested by many observers – some 10.4 million Venezuelan voters participated in the consultation, 95% of them saying they were in favor of the integration of Essequibo into the country.
Elections in 2024
Analysts believe that the referendum and the nationalist rhetoric of Venezuelan power over Essequibo are an attempt at political manipulation less than a year before the 2024 presidential election.
“It’s a sort of trial balloon” for President Maduro “before the presidential elections to assess the mobilization capacity and try to refine his strategy for 2024,” explains Mariano de Alba, of the International Crisis Group think tank. A “strategy of dividing the opposition is the only way for him to have a good chance of winning the election” in 2024, he judges.
Riding on the outcome of the referendum, President Maduro advocated the creation of a special military zone near the border and ordered the state oil giant PDVSA to grant operating licenses in the Essequibo. He also threatened to ban Venezuela from oil companies operating in the Essequibo with concessions granted by Guyana.
On Thursday, Guyanese Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo said his country did not “trust” Mr. Maduro, and his “unpredictable government”.
President Maduro ‘has difficulty finding food for his population, many people have fled this country […] because of the disastrous economic policies he has pursued and the lack of democracy,” he lambasted.
Oil companies operating in Guyana “must ignore Maduro and his ultimatum. They operate legally, completely legally,” he also said.
In this tense context, the Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, described as a “provocation” the air military exercises that the United States had just announced would be held in Guyana.
Washington, ally of Georgetown, affirmed its “unwavering support for the sovereignty of Guyana”, through the voice of American Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Some 125,000 people or a fifth of Guyana’s population live in Essequibo, which covers two-thirds of the country’s land area.
Venezuela maintains that the Essequibo River should be the natural border, as in 1777 during the time of the Spanish Empire. Guyana argues that the border, dating from the English colonial era, was ratified in 1899 by an arbitration court in Paris.