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(recast) Maduro orders to review relations with Guyana amid territorial dispute

Xinhua, July 8, 2015 Adjust font size:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has recalled its ambassador to Guyana for consultations and placed under review diplomatic relations with its neighbor in protest of a century-old territorial dispute that resurfaced after an oil discovery by ExxonMobil.

During an address to parliament, the Venezuelan president said on Monday the current impasse with Georgetown is part of a campaign against Caracas headed by the U.S. transnational ExxonMobil and political groups in Washington.

"There is a political, economic, diplomatic and media campaign against Venezuela to create a sophisticated operation in the region that can end up in high-intensity military conflicts," he said.

The controversy centers on the lands west of the Essequibo River of Guyana, covering about two-thirds of the small English- speaking nation after the U.S. company made an off shore oil discovery.

Maduro created by decree a new area of "comprehensive defense" offshore leaving the former British colony with no direct access to the Atlantic.

The Venezuelan president said his Guyanese counterpart, David Granger, had refused Caracas' sincere efforts to open diplomatic talks. However, he ruled out going to war with Guyana and any armed conflict over the dispute is widely seen as extremely unlikely.

"We are victims of dispossession. I say this to our friends and also to our enemies: No one will ever get Venezuela to renounce its historical rights to the Essequibo," he said.

Maduro asked the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convene a meeting with Guyana to address this issue and called for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to also intervene. The dispute stems from an 1899 court ruling that required Venezuela to relinquish an undeveloped but resource-rich jungle territory called the Essequibo that constitutes about two- thirds of Guyanese territory.

Caracas contends the ruling was invalid, and many official maps still describe the Essequibo as Venezuelan territory. Endite