The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, highlighted that relations with Guyana are going through a moment of turbulence, and asserted this Sunday that his counterpart from the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, has mocked the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), the Caribbean Community (Caricom), and the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, who promoted dialogue between both nations to find a solution to the Essequibo territorial controversy:
“Right now, we could say, we are going through a moment of turbulence. Because Guyana acts not like the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, Guyana is acting like “British Guyana”, accepting that a warship goes to its coasts and from its coasts threatens Venezuela,” said the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro in the interview granted the writer and intellectual Ignacio Ramonet, in the Birthplace of the Liberator Simón Bolívar in Caracas and published on the La Jornada website, in which he recalled the presence of a British ship on the Atlantic coast between Venezuela and Guyana.
“Because that warship, since it departed for its coasts, went with a voice of threat to Venezuela. And the impertinent, insolent statements by the English Chancellory have been to reaffirm its threat to Venezuela,” he noted.
Maduro assured that the government in London and the president of Guyana mock President Lula, the president of CELAC, Ralph Gonsalves, and all the Caricom countries:
“They have mocked us by threatening Venezuela with a military ship. They have mocked, and they have kicked the Argyle Agreement, they have kicked it,” said the head of state.
The president described the Guyanese president’s actions as a colonial expression of the former British empire:
“He acts like a president of a colonial British Guyana. He acts like a tied, subjugated country. I don’t accept your excuses! He tries to excuse himself, President Irfaan Ali, saying that Guyana will never threaten Venezuela. But it is not he who has uttered a word of threat, it is its owners, it is the old and decadent and rotting former-British empire that has sent a ship,” the president argued.
In this regard, he reiterated that the Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB), faithful to their libertarian principles, are ready to fulfill the commitment to defend and protect the territorial integrity of the Venezuelan homeland:
“It is a Venezuela that has (a) military power to respond. And I say it with humility, with simplicity. Because I know the Venezuelan military very well. And I know that they give their lives to defend and protect the sovereignty of this country. I have told you, we are a people of peace. Through the good ways, everything. By the hard way, don’t come looking for us. Don’t look for us! “He stressed.
