Talks were held yes­ter­day be­tween the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ters of Guyana and Venezuela, fol­low­ing Venezuela’s star­tling an­nounce­ment on Tues­day of mea­sures en­forc­ing its claim to Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion—and de­spite hold­ing their ground on re­spec­tive con­cerns yes­ter­day, both sides re­main open to com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“We re­main open ...” said Guyana’s For­eign Af­fairs and In­ter­na­tion­al Co-op­er­a­tion Min­is­ter Hugh Todd, re­ply­ing to Guardian Me­dia queries on if fur­ther di­a­logue would be held and if he was sat­is­fied with yes­ter­day’s talks.

Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yvan Gill, with whom Todd spoke, al­so said the Venezue­lan side had, “... Agreed to keep the chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open.”

The dis­cus­sion was con­duct­ed by phone, Todd con­firmed. He said yes­ter­day’s con­ver­sa­tion with Gill was ini­ti­at­ed by Car­los Amador Perez Sil­va, Am­bas­sador of Venezuela to Guyana.

The dis­cus­sion has been seen as an at­tempt to nor­malise re­la­tions and cre­ate a re­set fol­low­ing rock­et­ing ten­sions be­tween both coun­tries over Venezuela’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al claim on the Es­se­qui­bo. That com­pris­es more than two-thirds of Guyana’s na­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

This, fol­low­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s an­nounce­ment on Tues­day of mea­sures to en­force last Sun­day’s ref­er­en­dum, where Venezue­lan vot­ers heav­i­ly backed Venezuela’s claim on the Es­se­qui­bo.

Maduro’s mea­sures in­clud­ed re­con­fig­ur­ing the map of Venezuela show­ing the Es­se­qui­bo as part of his coun­try, an­nounc­ing en­er­gy li­cences and ex­plo­ration and a Min­istry of De­fence for the Es­se­qui­bo head­ed by Venezue­lan vice pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly yes­ter­day unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved the mea­sures, Cara­cas of­fi­cials con­firmed.

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, ad­dress­ing Guyana’s pop­u­la­tion on Tues­day, con­demned Venezuela’s “un­law­ful claim” to the Es­se­qui­bo. He said the mea­sures an­nounced are in bla­tant dis­re­gard of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s De­cem­ber 1 or­der.

He said Venezuela had lit­er­al­ly de­clared it­self an “out­law na­tion.” Ali said Guyana viewed the sit­u­a­tion “as an im­mi­nent threat to its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and will in­ten­si­fy pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to safe­guard its ter­ri­to­ry.”

Ali, who as­sured in­vestors they had noth­ing to fear, added, “The Guyana De­fence Force is on full alert and has en­gaged its mil­i­tary coun­ter­parts, in­clud­ing the US South­ern Com­mand.”

Venezuela post­ed a com­mu­niqué ear­ly yes­ter­day de­nounc­ing Ali’s “green light­ing” of the US South-Com­mand pres­ence.

How­ev­er, in a sub­se­quent com­mu­niqué, Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Gill spoke of his tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Guyana coun­ter­part Todd.

The com­mu­niqué stat­ed, “The Gov­ern­ment of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela in­formed that to­day (Dec 6), at the re­quest of the Guyanese side, For­eign Min­is­ter Hugh Todd held a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with For­eign Min­is­ter Yvan Gill to dis­cuss the ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the con­sul­ta­tive ref­er­en­dum called by the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly which took place on 3rd De­cem­ber.

“The Venezue­lan side took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to up­date the gov­ern­ment of Guyana on the over­whelm­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar con­sul­ta­tion, which re­sult­ed in an un­ap­peal­able man­date for the Venezue­lan in­sti­tu­tions on the route to fol­low for the set­tle­ment of this ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy, which is the Gene­va Agree­ment signed be­tween the par­ties in 1966.

“The Venezue­lan side ex­pressed the need to stop the ac­tions of ag­gra­va­tion of the con­tro­ver­sy in the ter­ri­to­ry of the Guayana Es­e­qui­ba and agreed to keep the chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open.”

Todd ex­pressed con­cern over the re­cent ac­tion em­a­nat­ing from Cara­cas over the last 24 hours, which he said was in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the ICJ’s De­cem­ber 1 or­der.

He re­it­er­at­ed Guyana’s com­mit­ment to the res­o­lu­tion of the con­tro­ver­sy through the on­go­ing ju­di­cial process and en­cour­aged Venezuela to par­tic­i­pate in the case be­fore the court. Todd fur­ther re­it­er­at­ed Guyana’s com­mit­ment to re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law and the need for the main­te­nance of peace and se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion. He en­cour­aged re­spect for Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty.

Todd’s min­istry met yes­ter­day with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions in Guyana to brief them on the sit­u­a­tion.

US urges peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to con­tro­ver­sial mat­ter

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali had said Tues­day that he’d spo­ken to the Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and sev­er­al lead­ers, alert­ing them of the dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ments and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s “des­per­ate ac­tions that fly in the face of in­ter­na­tion­al law and con­sti­tute a grave threat to in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty.”

Ali of­fi­cial­ly wrote the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on the is­sue yes­ter­day for ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to be tak­en. Ali said Guyana al­so en­gaged Cari­com, the OAS, the Com­mon­wealth and many bi­lat­er­al part­ners, in­clud­ing the US, Brazil, the Unit­ed King­dom and France.

Cari­com con­venes an emer­gency ses­sion of re­gion­al lead­ers to­mor­row via video­con­fer­enc­ing and will make “ad­di­tion­al pro­nounce­ments”, T&T For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne said yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Guardian Me­dia queries, a US Em­bassy spokesper­son said the US sup­ports a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of the Venezuela/Guyana bor­der dis­pute.

“The 1899 ar­bi­tral award de­ter­mined the land bound­ary be­tween Venezuela and Guyana and should be re­spect­ed un­less, or un­til, the par­ties reach a new agree­ment, or a com­pe­tent le­gal body de­cides oth­er­wise. The Unit­ed States urges Venezuela and Guyana to con­tin­ue to seek a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of their dis­pute, in­clud­ing by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice,” they added.

De­spite the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween the two neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, George­town was yes­ter­day re­port­ed as con­tin­u­ing calm and peo­ple were putting up Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in some places.