Venezuela’s acting president defends country’s territory and rejects Trump’s 51st state remarks

Venezuela ’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez told jour­nal­ists Mon­day that her coun­try had no plans to be­come the 51st U.S. state af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he was “se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing” the move.

Ro­dríguez was speak­ing at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in The Hague on the fi­nal day of hear­ings in a dis­pute be­tween her coun­try and neigh­bour­ing Guyana over the mas­sive min­er­al- and oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

“We will con­tin­ue to de­fend our in­tegri­ty, our sov­er­eign­ty, our in­de­pen­dence, our his­to­ry,” said Ro­dríguez, who as­sumed pow­er in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing a U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion that oust­ed then-Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela is “not a colony, but a free coun­try,” she added.

Speak­ing to Fox News ear­li­er on Mon­day, Trump said he was “se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing mak­ing Venezuela the 51st US state,” ac­cord­ing to a post by Fox News’ co-an­chor John Roberts on so­cial me­dia. The White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on the mat­ter.

Trump has made sim­i­lar com­ments about Cana­da.

White House spokesper­son An­na Kel­ly lat­er de­clined to com­ment on Trump’s plans in an in­ter­view of her own with Roberts on Fox News. Kel­ly said the pres­i­dent is “fa­mous for nev­er ac­cept­ing the sta­tus quo,” and praised Ro­dríguez for “work­ing in­cred­i­bly co­op­er­a­tive­ly” with the U.S.

Ro­dríguez went on to say that Venezue­lan and U.S. of­fi­cials have been in touch and are work­ing on “co­op­er­a­tion and un­der­stand­ing.”

Be­fore ad­dress­ing Trump’s com­ments, Ro­dríguez de­fend­ed her coun­try’s claim to Es­se­qui­bo at the Unit­ed Na­tions’ high­est court, telling judges that po­lit­i­cal ne­go­ti­a­tions — not a ju­di­cial rul­ing — will re­solve the cen­tu­ry-old ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute.

The 62,000-square-mile ter­ri­to­ry, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana, 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.

That out­put is close to Venezuela’s dai­ly pro­duc­tion of about 1 mil­lion bar­rels a day and has trans­formed one of the small­est coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca in­to a sig­nif­i­cant en­er­gy pro­duc­er.

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, Maduro, threat­ened to an­nex the re­gion by force af­ter hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum ask­ing vot­ers if Es­se­qui­bo should be turned in­to a Venezue­lan state. Maduro was cap­tured Jan. 3 dur­ing a U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in Venezuela’s cap­i­tal, Cara­cas, and tak­en to New York to face drug traf­fick­ing charges. He has plead­ed not guilty.

Ro­dríguez did not ad­dress the ref­er­en­dum in her re­marks, but she told the court that the 1966 agree­ment is de­signed to al­low ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Venezuela and Guyana to re­solve the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute. And she ac­cused Guyana’s gov­ern­ment of un­der­min­ing the agree­ment with the “op­por­tunis­tic” de­ci­sion to ask the court to ad­dress the dis­pute.

“At a time when the mech­a­nisms es­tab­lished in the Gene­va agree­ment were still ful­ly in force, Guyana uni­lat­er­al­ly chose to shift the dis­pute from the ne­go­ti­at­ing are­na to a ju­di­cial res­o­lu­tion,” she said. “This change was not ac­ci­den­tal; it co­in­cid­ed with the dis­cov­ery in 2015 of the oil field that would be­come world-renowned.”

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.

Venezuela has warned that its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the hear­ings does not mean ei­ther con­sent to, or recog­ni­tion of, the court’s ju­ris­dic­tion. —THE HAGUE, Nether­lands (AP)

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Sto­ry by MOL­LY QUELL and REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Regi­na Gar­cia Cano re­port­ed from Mex­i­co City.