Venezuela proposed this Tuesday to Guyana to “definitively establish a negotiation in good faith” to resolve the controversy surrounding the disputed territory of Essequibo, remembering that 60 years ago the Geneva Agreement was signed, seen by Caracas as the only way to “reach a mutually acceptable solution”. The Venezuelan government, now under the command of interim dictator Delcy Rodríguez, makes the proposal amid what the country defines as a “new political moment”, after Nicolás Maduro was captured by the United States in January.
In a statement shared on social media by the interim dictator, the Executive defended negotiation as the “only possible way to resolve the controversy” and to “make a practical, acceptable and satisfactory adjustment for both parties”: “Venezuela celebrates with joy and patriotic fervor the 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1966 Geneva Agreement, the only valid legal instrument to reach a mutually acceptable solution to the territorial dispute over Guyana Essequiba”, states the text.
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The agreement, according to Caracas, “put to rest the discussion about the validity or invalidity of the 1899 Arbitration Award and established the obligation” of both South American nations to “put an end to the controversy” through “a practical and mutually acceptable adjustment”. Venezuela assured that, during these six decades, it demonstrated its “absolute commitment to fulfilling the obligations” established in the document; on the other hand, it denounced that Guyana, “since at least 2015”, has “violated and ignored the Geneva Agreement, frustrating in bad faith the good offices processes and seeking to obtain territorial titles that it never possessed, through an invalid unilateral demand before the International Court of Justice, which lacks jurisdiction to resolve this controversy” – in 2018, Guyana sued the ICJ for the court to confirm the report 1899, which ruled in favor of the United Kingdom, to which Guyana belonged until 1966.
The government of Delcy Rodríguez stressed that it “will never renounce its historical rights and titles over Guyana Essequiba, which was, is and will be part of the territorial integrity of Venezuela”.
Disagreements over the border limits around Essequibo, a vast region of around 160,000 square kilometers, rich in oil deposits and natural resources, began with the Paris Arbitration Award of 1899, which gave sovereignty of the territory to the then British Guiana. Decades later, Venezuela declared this verdict null and void and signed the Geneva Agreement with the United Kingdom, which recognized Venezuela’s claim, although it did not offer a definitive solution.
