UN to hold emergency meeting at Guyana’s request on Venezuelan claim to a 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.