CARACAS, December 3. /TASS/. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was the first to cast a vote in a referendum on the territorial dispute with Guyana.
"I voted with enthusiasm and deep love that each of you will feel. If you want to feel love for your homeland, come to vote on this blessed Sunday, December 3," Maduro said in a televised address to Venezuelans. "The powerful voice of national unity must encourage the president of Guyana to return to the Geneva Agreement and to the mechanisms of peaceful diplomatic negotiations."
The referendum is designed to provide the Venezuelan government with popular support for a peaceful resolution of the territorial dispute through direct peace negotiations with Guyana, as is stipulated in the 1966 Geneva Agreement, and to reaffirm the country's legal and historical rights to the region of Guayana Esequiba. The Guyanese authorities strongly condemned the referendum and petitioned the UN International Court of Justice to cancel the referendum. However, on December 1, the court in The Hague refused to interfere in the internal affairs of Venezuela and only asked the sides not to take actions that could exacerbate the situation in the disputed region.
The conflict between Venezuela and Guyana over the 159,500 square kilometers area west of the Essequibo River has been going on for more than 100 years. The territory makes up more than two-thirds of Guyana and is home to 283,000 people out of the country’s total population of slightly more than 800,000.