St. Vincent Meeting to Address the Essequibo Dispute Today

On Thursday, the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the Guyanese President Irfaan Ali will meet in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to address the dispute over Guyana Esequiba, a territory of about 160,000 square kilometers rich in natural resources.

RELATED:

PM Rowley to Attend the Venezuela-Guyana Meeting

Their meeting will take place after several weeks of tension related to the holding of a consultative referendum through which over 95 percent of Venezuelans supported the defense of their country's sovereignty and the creation of the state of Guayana Esequiba.

Once the results of the referendum were known, the Venezuelan government began to implement the popular mandate through measures such as the establishment of a military division near the area, the delivery of identity cards to the residents of Essequibo, and the appointment of a single authority for the area.

With the aim of curbing geopolitical tensions, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) proposed a meeting between Maduro and Ali, which will also be attended by several leaders from the Caribbean region.

Among them are St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley, Barbados Head of Government Mia Mottley, and the leaders of Saint Lucia, Grenada, and the Bahamas.

The meeting will also bring together United Nations representatives and Lula's personal envoy Celso Amorim, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense of Brazil.

"We arrived in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with the flag of peace and the mandate of the Venezuelan people held high," President Maduro said upon arriving at the international airport of the host country of the meeting.