Presidents of Venezuela and Guyana will meet on December 14 due to tension due to territorial dispute (Spanish Only)

Maduro invites Guyana and the oil company ExxonMobil to talk about Essequibo.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was also invited to the meeting.

The presidents of Venezuela and Guyana will meet next week in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the midst of high tensions due to a territorial dispute between both countries over the Essequibo, which has reached the United Nations Security Council.

The Prime Minister of the host country, Ralph Gonsalves, informed in a letter addressed to the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, and his Guyanese counterpart, Irfaan Ali, that the meeting will be held on December 14 at 10:00 am (14:00 GMT) in that Caribbean island.

"Given the events and circumstances regarding the territorial dispute (...) we have assessed, in the interest of all (...), the urgent need to defuse the conflict and institute a proper dialogue, face to face, between the presidents of Guyana and Venezuela," the text said. "Both (presidents) have shown themselves in favor of this position in the search for a peaceful coexistence."

The meeting is being promoted by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), of which Gonsalves is president pro-tempore, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Earlier, in a communiqué, Caracas reported recent conversations of President Nicolás Maduro with Lula da Silva, as well as with the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves (who holds the Presidency of CELAC), and the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres.

Venezuela and Guyana have been disputing the Essequibo territory for more than a century, but tensions have soared since the National Government held a referendum last Sunday in which 95% of voters supported declaring Venezuela as the legitimate owner of the region, according to official results.

South American countries, as well as Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States called these days for a détente and a peaceful solution.

Venezuela maintains that the Essequibo is part of its territory, as it was in 1777, when it was a colony of Spain. It appeals to the Geneva agreement, signed in 1966, before Guyana's independence from the United Kingdom, which laid the foundations for a negotiated solution and annulled an award of 1899.

The dispute was reignited when in 2015 U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil discovered huge crude oil reserves in the area. Guyana, with 800,000 inhabitants, was left with estimated reserves of 11 billion barrels of crude, the highest per capita in the world.

With this potential, Venezuela began to insist on its demand and since last Sunday's referendum, President Maduro ordered the state oil company PDVSA to issue licenses to authorize the extraction of crude oil in the region.

Similarly, Maduro decreed that Tumeremo, a town in the state of Bolivar (southeast), bordering the disputed area, be the capital of the eventual state of Guayana Esequiba, and opened an office of the identification agency (Saime) so that the inhabitants of that region can claim their nationality and identity card.