Georgetown, Guyana
The Super Hornets flew over Georgetown and surrounding areas in what a US embassy statement said was a “Guyana Defense Force-coordinated and approved” exercise.
The government in Georgetown said the flyover “seeks to deepen the ongoing security cooperation program between our two countries.”
But Venezuela said it threatened a fragile peace negotiated between Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Irfaan Ali in December, at the height of tensions over the Essequibo region that both countries lay claim to.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said it was the latest in a series of “repeated provocations” from the United States.
“Our integral aerospace defense system remains activated in the face of any attempt to breach Venezuelan geographical space, including our Essequibo territory,” he said.
Joint military exercises last December had also angered Caracas, which lambasted an “unfortune provocation by the United States in favor… of ExxonMobil in Guyana.”
Essequibo has been administered by Guyana for over a century and is the subject of border litigation before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
The region is home to 125,000 of Guyana’s 800,000 citizens, but Caracas has long claimed it should be under its control.
The squabble was revived in 2015 after US energy giant ExxonMobil discovered huge crude reserves in Essequibo and reached fever pitch last year after Georgetown started auctioning off oil blocks in the region.
Maduro’s government then called a controversial, non-binding referendum which overwhelmingly approved the creation of a Venezuelan province in Essequibo, sparking fears of a military conflict.
In December, Maduro and Ali met in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and agreed not to use force to settle the dispute.
Last month, the United States denied a claim by Maduro that it was building secret military bases in Essequibo.
dc-ba-pgf/mlr/st
© Agence France-Presse
