Venezuelan President Supports Meeting With Guyanese Counterpart

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Monday that he approves of the meeting with his Guyanese counterpart, Irfaan Ali, scheduled for next Thursday to address the territorial dispute over Guayana Esequiba.

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In a letter sent to the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, the president said, "I welcome direct dialogue, face to face, it has always been my proposal, because I believe in dialogue, sincere conversation, understanding and peaceful coexistence between peoples and nations. I will attend the meeting by a mandate from my people. Venezuela will win!"

This comes after the proposal presented to Caracas by the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Gonsalves himself, to install a high-level table to maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, without interference from external actors.

In the letter, Maduro also thanked the Caribbean Community (Caricom) for considering its request for direct dialogue as well as the efforts of Latin American and Caribbean leaders to seek the bilateral agreement.

The tweet reads, "I welcome direct dialogue, face to face, it has always been my proposal, because I believe in dialogue, sincere conversation, understanding and peaceful coexistence between peoples and nations. I will attend the appointment due to a mandate from my people. Venezuela Will Win!"

The President recalled that the territorial dispute was directly recognized by the United Kingdom in 1966 through the signing of the Geneva Agreement, after Venezuela demonstrated that "the award issued in 1899 by the Arbitral Tribunal of Paris was null and void, being the product of a plot, built under the protection of the Monroe Doctrine" between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

He reiterated that Venezuela's position, since that moment, has always been the path of dialogue with Guyana, in order to achieve a practical solution to the controversy, which has to 'be amicably resolved in a manner acceptable to both parties, as established in the Geneva Agreement.

For this reason, the Venezuelan president approves the dialogue initiative proposed by Gonsalves in a letter. Maduro expressed he hopes "it becomes a starting point towards the return of direct negotiations between the two countries, which have been disrupted in recent years by a series of actions contrary to the spirit of the Geneva Agreement itself."

Maduro added that he will attend the meeting next Thursday with a mandate from my people who, last December 3, participated in the consultative referendum to set the political and diplomatic actions for the defense of the Essequiba Guyana.

Likewise, he said that the imposition of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as the instance to seek a solution to the territorial controversy with Guyana is a violation of the principle of mutual consent already agreed upon between the parties, which makes it one of the factors of greatest incidence and threatens a deterioration of the situation.

"This meeting will precisely be an opportunity for us to clear the elements that have aggravated the controversy in recent years. In addition to the aforementioned unilateral imposition, I would like to make special mention of the arrogant and illegal attitude of the U.S. oil transnational ExxonMobil, which has been the beneficiary of oil concessions in a demarcated maritime area, in flagrant contravention of international law," said the president.

He also hopes that this high level meeting will address the main threats to the peace and stability of our countries, among them the involvement of the U.S. Southern Command, which has begun operations in the disputed territory.

The President expressed his conviction that "we will be able to find ways to defend our rights and reaffirm the history of goodwill that we have promoted from Venezuela, under our doctrine of Bolivarian Peace Diplomacy."

He said he was fully committed to this dialogue that calls on the parties involved to reestablish the fundamental principles of peaceful coexistence between countries.