Guyana activates security plan as US bombs Venezuela

Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali Sat­ur­day said Guyana has ac­ti­vat­ed its “se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture” af­ter the Unit­ed States bombed sev­er­al mil­i­tary and oth­er sites in Venezuela.

“We have ac­ti­vat­ed our se­cu­ri­ty plan to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the cit­i­zens of Guyana,” Ali told re­porters, adding “he se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture is ful­ly ac­tive.

“The Guyana De­fence Force and the se­cu­ri­ty forces are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and Guyanese should be re­as­sured that the gov­ern­ment is work­ing to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens.”

Pres­i­dent Ali said the the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Dr. Car­la Bar­nett, has al­so been up­dat­ed on the de­vel­op­ments and that the Chief of De­fence Staff, Brigadier Omar Khan has been in con­tact with oth­er se­cu­ri­ty part­ners in the re­gion.

“I will share in­for­ma­tion as it be­comes avail­able. Our en­tire se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture and pos­ture has been ac­ti­vat­ed all morn­ing,” he said.

Ali said ef­forts were be­ing made to hold an emer­gency sum­mit of lead­ers of the CARI­COM.

Pres­i­dent Ali said he has spo­ken to Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Al­is­tair Rout­ledge, con­cern­ing Exxon­Mo­bil’s op­er­a­tions off­shore Guyana where al­most one mil­lion bar­rels of oil per day is be­ing pro­duced.

“They have been alert­ed and we’re work­ing to­geth­er,” he said.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has since de­clared a state of emer­gency over what his gov­ern­ment called an “ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion” by the Unit­ed States on the cap­i­tal Cara­cas.

Mul­ti­ple ex­plo­sions, ac­com­pa­nied by sounds re­sem­bling air­craft fly­overs, were heard around the city.

“Venezuela re­jects, re­pu­di­ates, and de­nounces be­fore the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion per­pe­trat­ed by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca against Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry and peo­ple,” the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment said.

Maduro has al­so called on the coun­try’s forces to mo­bilise, con­demn­ing what he called an “im­pe­ri­al­ist at­tack” on Venezuela.

Maduro said in a state­ment that civil­ians and the army had been joint­ly de­ployed to safe­guard na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty and pub­lic or­der, de­scrib­ing the move as a uni­fied ef­fort in­volv­ing the peo­ple, the mil­i­tary and the po­lice.

He said the gov­ern­ment would lodge for­mal com­plaints with the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­to­nio Guter­res, the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Non-Aligned Move­ment, seek­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of the Unit­ed States.

The US gov­ern­ment has of­fered a US$50 mil­lion re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest of Maduro, whom it de­scribes as a nar­co-ter­ror­ist and a key leader in the sus­pect­ed nar­co-ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion, Car­tel de Los Soles.