UN to hold emergency meeting at Guyana's request on Venezuelan claim to vast oil-rich region

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency closed meeting Friday at the request of Guyana following Venezuela's weekend referendum claiming the vast oil- and mineral-rich Essequibo region that makes up a large part of its neighbor.

In a letter to the council president, Guyana's foreign minister, Hugh Hilton Todd, accused Venezuela of violating the U.N. Charter by attempting to take its territory.

The letter recounted the arbitration between then-British Guiana and Venezuela in 1899 and the formal demarcation of their border in a 1905 agreement. For over 60 years, he said, Venezuela accepted the boundary, but in 1962 it challenged the 1899 arbitration that set the border.

The diplomatic fight over the Essequibo region has flared since then, but it intensified in 2015 after ExxonMobil announced it had found vast amounts of oil off its coast.

The dispute escalated as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro held a referendum Sunday in which Venezuelans approved his claim of sovereignty over Essequibo. Maduro has since ordered Venezuela's state-owned companies to immediately begin exploration in the disputed region.

The 159,500-square-kilometer area accounts for two-thirds of Guyana. But Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves, has always considered Essequibo as its own because the region was within its boundaries during the Spanish colonial period.

In an Associated Press interview Wednesday, Guyanan President Irfaan Ali accused Venezuela of defying a ruling last week by the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands. It ordered Venezuela not to take any action until the court rules on the countries' competing claims, a process expected to take years.

Venezuela's government condemned Ali's...