T&T, wide­ly re­gard­ed as one of Venezuela’s strongest al­lies in the re­gion, now finds it­self on the op­po­site side of an is­sue in­volv­ing that coun­try.

The Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has drawn con­sid­er­able crit­i­cism from the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion for staunch­ly main­tain­ing a non-in­ter­ven­tion and non-in­ter­fer­ence stance on Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro regime.

But yes­ter­day, in one of his first ma­jor func­tions as chair­man of Cari­com, Dr Row­ley presided over a Spe­cial Emer­gency Meet­ing of the re­gion­al group­ing at which Venezuela’s re­cent acts of ag­gres­sion against Guyana were strong­ly con­demned.

Join­ing with his Caribbean coun­ter­parts, Dr Row­ley re­pu­di­at­ed Venezuela’s an­nounce­ment of a plan to es­tab­lish a new ter­ri­to­ry in an area over which it is em­broiled in a decades-old dis­pute with Guyana. In a state­ment, Cari­com ex­pressed “firm and unswerv­ing sup­port for the main­te­nance and preser­va­tion of the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of Guyana”.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, this mat­ter puts T&T on the same side with the Unit­ed States on an is­sue in­volv­ing Venezuela. Af­ter all, this coun­try has been re­sist­ing not-so-sub­tle pres­sure from the Unit­ed States to recog­nise Juan Guaidó as Pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

But while this coun­try has, for the most part, main­tained cor­dial diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with its clos­est Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bour, Pres­i­dent Maduro’s brazen at­tempts—which es­ca­lat­ed in just the past week—to es­tab­lish a new Ter­ri­to­ry for the de­vel­op­ment of the At­lantic Fa­cade in the Es­se­qui­bo Re­gion, ef­fec­tive­ly lay­ing claim to a huge swathe of Guyana’s land space, is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

The move com­plete­ly dis­re­gards an In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) rul­ing that it had ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the long-run­ning dis­pute. The Maduro regime is adamant that the ICJ is in­ca­pable of reach­ing a sat­is­fac­to­ry set­tle­ment of the dis­pute and is lay­ing full claim to the 159,542 kilo­me­tres of ter­ri­to­ry with rich re­serves of oil, gas, min­ing and forestry re­sources—an at­trac­tive prize for Venezuela which is in the throes of eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil.

The mat­ter is due to come up be­fore the ICJ on Fri­day.

Ten­sions over the ter­ri­to­ry have been rag­ing off and on be­tween Cara­cas and George­town for cen­turies. There was a ma­jor flare-up be­tween Venezuela and Britain, then the colo­nial gov­ern­ment of Guyana, when gold was dis­cov­ered in the re­gion in 1876.

The lat­est dis­pute fol­lows the dis­cov­ery of oil in the Stabroek Block off­shore the Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ry. There have been some in­cur­sions by Venezuela’s navy at­tempt­ing to halt ex­plo­ration and drilling ac­tiv­i­ties by Guyana.

T&T has had its share of ter­ri­to­r­i­al ten­sions with Venezuela about mar­itime ar­eas. How­ev­er, dis­putes over fish­ing rights in the Gulf of Paria, the nar­row strait be­tween the two coun­tries, were re­solved some years ago.

Now there is a new source of ten­sion, close enough to have ma­jor reper­cus­sions for this coun­try if the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lates fur­ther. This time around, Venezuela is more per­sis­tent with its claim to Es­se­qui­bo.

The hope now is that the in­ter­ven­tion of the ICJ will bring about a de­fin­i­tive set­tle­ment of this cen­turies-old land bound­ary dis­pute, de­fus­ing the sit­u­a­tion be­fore it gets fur­ther out of hand.