Guyana presses Venezuela on border gunfire as they vie over an energy-rich region

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Guyana on Thurs­day de­mand­ed that Venezuela in­ves­ti­gate what it said were two re­cent shoot­ings tar­get­ing Guyanese troops along their shared bor­der, in­clud­ing one that wound­ed a sol­dier.

A protest note from Guyana’s For­eign Min­istry said the two at­tacks took place ear­li­er this month on sol­diers pa­trolling the Cuyu­ni Riv­er. It comes just days af­ter the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries ap­peared be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in The Hague for ar­gu­ments in a dis­pute over a min­er­al- and oil-rich re­gion that en­com­pass­es two-thirds of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry and that Venezuela claims as its own.

One of the at­tacks left a sol­dier with two gun­shot wounds in the leg, Guyana’s De­fense Force said in a state­ment. Guyanese of­fi­cials have re­port­ed sim­i­lar shoot­ings over the past two years, with one of them in­jur­ing eight sol­diers, ac­cord­ing to the state­ment.

The mil­i­tary said sol­diers re­turned fire in all cas­es.

The protest note al­so urged Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment to take steps to pre­vent fu­ture at­tacks against Guyanese civil­ians and mil­i­tary.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s press of­fice did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

On Mon­day, Venezue­lan’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez de­fend­ed her coun­try’s claim to the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion at the Unit­ed Na­tions’ high­est court, telling judges in The Hague that po­lit­i­cal ne­go­ti­a­tions — not a ju­di­cial rul­ing — will re­solve the cen­tu­ry-old ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween the South Amer­i­can coun­tries.

The 62,000-square-mile ter­ri­to­ry is rich in gold, di­a­monds, tim­ber and oth­er nat­ur­al re­sources. It al­so sits near mas­sive off­shore oil de­posits cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing an av­er­age 900,000 bar­rels a day.

Venezuela has con­sid­ered Es­se­qui­bo its own since the Span­ish colo­nial pe­ri­od, when the jun­gle re­gion fell with­in its bound­aries. But an 1899 de­ci­sion by ar­bi­tra­tors from Britain, Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States drew the bor­der along the Es­se­qui­bo Riv­er large­ly in fa­vor of Guyana.

Venezuela has ar­gued that a 1966 agree­ment sealed in Gene­va to re­solve the dis­pute ef­fec­tive­ly nul­li­fied the 19th-cen­tu­ry ar­bi­tra­tion. In 2018, how­ev­er, three years af­ter Exxon­Mo­bil an­nounced a sig­nif­i­cant oil dis­cov­ery off the Es­se­qui­bo coast, Guyana’s gov­ern­ment went to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice and asked judges to up­hold the 1899 rul­ing.

Ten­sions be­tween the coun­tries fur­ther flared in 2023, when Ro­dríguez’s pre­de­ces­sor threat­ened to an­nex the re­gion by force af­ter hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum ask­ing vot­ers if Es­se­qui­bo should be turned in­to a Venezue­lan state.

When hear­ings opened last week, Guyana’s for­eign min­is­ter, Hugh Hilton Todd, told the pan­el of in­ter­na­tion­al judges that the dis­pute “has been a blight on our ex­is­tence as a sov­er­eign state from the very be­gin­ning.” He said that 70% of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry is at stake.

The court is like­ly to take months to is­sue a fi­nal and legal­ly bind­ing rul­ing in the case. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (AP)