According to a Foreign Ministry statement, the chief diplomat said during the meeting that this and other activities by Caracas in the disputed area violated Guyana’s sovereignty as well as international laws that require a halt to the deployment of Venezuelan personnel, facilities and equipment.

He stressed Georgetown’s compliance with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the border dispute issued a year ago, which called on both countries to refrain from actions that would aggravate the situation. Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali also instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to write to the ICJ, international partners and other nations in the region condemning the Venezuelan army’s construction of a bridge linking the mainland to the remote river island of Anacoco.

He also reiterated his commitment to diplomacy as the main element of the national defence strategy in the face of what he called “threats to the territorial integrity and sovereignty” of the country.

Venezuela’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino, replied that the structure replaced a temporary one built a year ago, that it was not a military occupation and that the aim was to promote national development, as a rural school and a dispensary had been jointly inaugurated.

The seven square kilometre island in the Cuyuní River has been occupied by the armed forces of the Bolivarian Republic since 1966.

For more than a century, the two states have been at loggerheads over the Essequibo, an area of about 160,000 square kilometres, and at the end of 2023 the controversy intensified with complaints from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

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