Sawt Falasteen - UN Security Council debates escalating Guyana-Venezuela row

Delegates left the meeting -- which took place at Guyana's request -- with roses offered by Ecuador, which chairs the Council this month. None made statements to reporters.

Guyana says Caracas' move on the oil-rich Essequibo region, disputed for more than a century, "threatens international peace and security."

World leaders called for calm as Venezuela decried joint US-Guyana military exercises as a "provocation" and vowed to push ahead with the "recovery" of the region, which both neighbors claim as their own.

Fears of the conflict blowing up have deepened after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government held a controversial referendum Sunday on the fate of Essequibo.

The region has been administered by Guyana for more than a century and is the subject of border litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

It makes up about two-thirds of Guyanese territory and is home to 125,000 of the country's 800,000 citizens, but is also claimed by Venezuela.

Controversy has simmered since 2015 when US oil giant ExxonMobil, operating under licenses from Guyana, discovered vast oil reserves in the area.

"Guyana and ExxonMobil will have to sit down with us face to face sooner rather than later," Maduro said Friday during a ceremony in front of the Miraflores presidential palace, where he showed a map of Venezuela that included Essequibo as official territory.

Washington provoked an angry response from Caracas on Thursday by announcing via the embassy in Georgetown that it would hold joint "flight operations within Guyana" as part of "routine engagement and operations to enhance security partnership" with its ally.

"This unfortunate provocation by the United States in favor... of ExxonMobil in Guyana is another step in the wrong direction," Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said on X, formerly Twitter.

In response, Guyanese Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo said Venezuela "is not going to succeed, now or ever" at taking the region.

"Every single movement that Venezuelans make, particularly in the proximity of our borders, is tracked, every single one of them," he said.

- 'Unwavering support' -

In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva voiced "growing concern" Thursday about the tensions on his country's northern border.

Lula told a summit of South America's Mercosur bloc: "If there's one thing we don't want here in South America, it's war."

The Brazilian army said Wednesday it was reinforcing its presence in two northern cities.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron also warned Venezuela not to take "unilateral action" in the dispute. Guyana is an English-speaking former colony of Britain and the Netherlands.

Russia, a close ally of Venezuela's Maduro, added its voice Friday, urging a "peaceful solution."

"We call on the parties to refrain from any actions that could unbalance the situation and cause mutual harm," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Guyana insists Essequibo's frontier was determined by an arbitration panel in 1899.

But Venezuela claims the Essequibo River to the region's east forms a natural border recognized as far back as 1777.

In Sunday's plebiscite, voters were asked whether citizenship should be granted to the English-speaking people of a new "Guyana Esequiba State" and "consequently incorporating said state on the map of Venezuelan territory."

Officials in Caracas said 95 percent of voters supported the measures.

Analysts say the referendum and the rise in nationalist rhetoric is an attempt to distract attention ahead of elections in 2024 when Maduro will seek a new term amid economic crisis and dwindling oil production at home.

"It was like a kind of trial balloon ahead of the presidential elections" to measure the "capacity to mobilize and try to fine-tune their strategy for 2024," said Mariano de Alba, an advisor to the International Crisis Group.

Two days after the vote, Maduro proposed a bill to create a Venezuelan province in Essequibo and ordered the state oil company to issue licenses for extracting crude in the region.

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F.Qawasmeh--SF-PST