Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched military exercises with some 5,600 troops in Guyana’s border area on Thursday (December 28) in “response to the provocation” of the United Kingdom, which sent a warship to Guyana amid the crisis on the Essequibo.
“I ordered the activation of a joint action of all Bolivarian [Venezuelan] national armed forces in the Eastern Caribbean, on the Atlantic coast, a joint action of a defensive nature, in response to the provocation and threat of United Kingdom against the peace and sovereignty of our country,” President Nicolas Maduro said during a radio and television broadcast, in which he showed images of warships and fighter jets patrolling the The area.
The British patrol vessel, HMS Trent, will arrive in Guyana on Friday and is scheduled to participate in military exercises in Guyanese waters for “less than a week.” It is not expected to dock in Georgetown, a Guyanese foreign affairs source said. HMS Trent, usually based in the Mediterranean, was sent to the Caribbean at the beginning of December to fight drug trafficking.
Territorial dispute
In a statement, the Venezuelan government had “categorically rejected the arrival of the ship (…) which constitutes an act of hostile provocation”. “The presence of this military vessel is extremely serious,” which is why “Venezuela urges the Guyanese authorities to take immediate steps for the removal of HMS Trent, and to refrain from further involving military powers in the dispute territorial”, adds the text.
Some 125,000 people, or a fifth of Guyana’s population, live in Essequibo, which covers two-thirds of the country’s land area. Venezuela maintains that the Essequibo River should be the natural border, as in 1777, during the time of the Spanish Empire. Guyana argues that the border, dating from the English colonial era, was ratified in 1899 by an arbitration court in Paris.
Tension rose after the launch of oil tenders by Guyana in September, then the referendum organized in response on December 3 in Venezuela on the annexation of the Essequibo, a territory of 160,000 square kilometers rich in oil and resources natural resources, administered by Georgetown and claimed by Venezuela.
According to Mr. Maduro, the first phase of the Venezuelan military exercises included 5,682 fighters with F-16 (American) and Sukhoi (Russian) warplanes patrolling the area.
