Venezuela accuses US of interfering in border controversy

Last Updated on Wednesday, 7 October 2015, 3:17 by GxMedia

Reproduced from TeleSurTV

The Venezuelan president denounced U.S. interference in the dispute over the Essequibo region, shortly after a statement from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry was released on Tuesday.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rejected declarations from the new U.S. Ambassador Perry Holloway, regarding the dispute over the Essequibo region. (Guyana regards the issue as a controversy over the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award that settled the land-boundary with Venezuela).

“United States, take your hands off of the Guyana Essequibo,” said Maduro. “We will not accept your interference any longer.”

Maduro’s comments came just a few hours after the Foreign Ministry expressed its strong opposition to recent statements from the U.S. ambassador in Guyana.

The text argues that Ambassador Holloway’s comments “are further evidence of intrusion on the part of the U.S. government in the issues that concern only Venezuela and Guyana, in their obsession to damage brotherly relations between the countries of the Caribbean.”

The criticism comes after Ambassador Holloway called on Venezuela to respect the 1899 decision over the territory. However, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry responded that the parties responsible for that decision were “senior U.S. officials in collusion with right-wing mercenaries of the old British Empire.”

In the statement, the Venezuelan government denounces U.S. interference, claiming it stems from a “calculated strategy to try to validate, by way of intimidation, the null rights of Exxon Mobil to carry out extractive activities in a disputed territory and regulated by the Agreement Geneva 1966.”

The statement urged the United States not to get involved “directly or indirectly in matters that exclusively belong to the parties involved in the territorial dispute,” particularly because the United States “is one of those responsible for the abritral fraud against Venezuela and therefore responsible for the existence of the dispute itself. “

These latest declarations come less than two weeks after Maduro and Guayanese President David Granger agreed to allow the U.N. to mediate between the two countries over the disputed territory.