Russia has agreed to a meeting with the government here on Moscow’s false statements that a British military base was being built on an Essequibo River island to train Venezuelan refugees to destabilise the Nicholas Maduro government.
“They responded and we have agreed that there will be a meeting with the Foreign Minister [Sergei Lavrov],” Foreign Secretary Carl Greenidge said at a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Takuba Lodge, yesterday. He said that he could not say what the nature of the talks will be but emphasised that Guyana holds firm to its stance that the statements are false.
Last month, during a weekly press briefing that was broadcast live by Russia Today, Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova said that “the British continue constructing a military base at the estuary of the Essequibo River.”
“They say it’s to fight the smuggling of drugs and arms,” she said, while adding that “several dozen of the so-called refugees from Venezuela have already arrived there. In fact, those are the people who have arrived to complete training for the recon and diversion groups in order to work in Venezuela and destabilise the situation and commit relevant actions from extremist to terrorist.”
Guyana’s Foreign Affairs Ministry swiftly responded, saying that the statement was “baseless” and “utterly false.”
“It is especially unfortunate given that relations between Guyana and Russia have always been based on mutual respect, trust and friendship,” it said.
Georgetown subsequently dispatched a note verbale to Moscow demanding the withdrawal of the “utterly and unambiguously false” statements.
Yesterday, Greenidge said that the world knows that this is a very open society and nothing of such magnitude would be true and not remain unknown. He said that while the Russians have not responded publicly, it has said that it will meet with officials from this country.
“Although they have not responded publicly, [Lavrov] has, within the last two weeks, sent a message with the Ambassador on this matter – that it is untrue. The person who spoke can’t be separated from the Russian administration because it was actually an official spokesman of Russia…,” Greenidge said. “Within the coming weeks, we would expect that we would resolve this matter, insofar as anything that needs to be resolved,” he added.
Greenidge had suggested previously that the baseless accusation might be linked to recent finds of petroleum deposits in Guyana’s sovereign territory.
