US announces military drills with Guyana following tensions with Venezuela | DW News

now looking elsewhere the US says it'll conduct joint military flight drills within Guyana as tensions rise with neighboring Venezuela over territorial claims Washington says the exercis is a routine but reiterated what it called its unwavering support for guyana's sovereignty Venezuela has described the drills as a provocation last weekend it held a referendum aimed at reaffirming its territorial claim to the oil Rich ESO region speaking at the mercosur summit of South American nations Brazilian president L inao Lula Silva expressed his concern about the deepening dispute Brazil shares a border with both Venezuela and Guyana something we don't want in South America is war we don't need a war we don't need conflict what we need is to build peace DW Latin America correspondent Nicole RZ is following the story for us hi Nicole now what more can you tell us about the growing tensions between the two countries well the situation that we're currently witnessing is indeed worrying um it's not only the US that will overfly the region to monitor Brazil has already sent in mon military forces to the Border region showing that they will be present this already happened roughly 10 days ago so this is not now it's already been going on for a bit and Brazil has a huge interest in maintain good relationships with both countries as you just said they share a border with Guana and also with Venezuela at the same time though getting the US now involved shows us that Brazil is maybe not enough to uh to deescalate this to also avoid uh something like the worst case scenario in annexation of Guyana by uh Venezuela so both of these countries are now trying to show presence are trying to send a sign to Maduro saying no more go no further because we're here as well and we are paying attention to this issue at the same time I think it is very important to also uh stress that uh the communication channels between both countries are still open uh so there is still communication going on now this dispute between uh the two countries over es aibo began many decades ago so why has president Nicholas Maduro revived Venezuela's claim over the region mudo time and again has provoked on this issue he has threatened on this issue it's of huge interest to Venezuela especially since 2015 because uh there were huge Reserve reserves of oil that were um detected there actually an us company is currently drilling off the coast of uh K and um they are trying to get the most out of it of course and Venezuela is trying to do the same they know that they uh Rich resources not only offshore they're also in the dense forests of the eso region we're talking about gold aluminium Rare Earth so this is quite a money making machine this would be quite a boost for any economy of any country really that's why there so much interest in the region and at the same time Maduro is heading into election campaign next year Venezuela is probably going to hold uh elections he's trying to be uh position himself he's also trying to avoid uh to to talk about the real issues the severe political and economic crisis in his country and this could be a tactic of course some analysts also uh think that he might declare a state of emergency over this whole issue just so that he can postpone the elections but at the same time Maduro has also made clear that he already considers this region part of Venezuela he's drawn up actually a new official map of Venezuela including this region and he has called on National companies to start drilling and extracting already and if he went that way way I think this would quite escalate everything we have the Brazilian military in the region we have the US who's paying a lot of attention right now and at the same time this comes as the US is actually softening the sanctions of Venezuela so this would be quite a difficult situation for the country itself and it could quite turn around on them in the end as well okay DW's Latin America correspondent Nichol re thank you

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Length: 4min 31sec (271 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023