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| - The UN's top court on Friday ruled that it had jurisdiction in a border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela that dates back more than a century and has flared up again with the discovery of oil. The decision means the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague will now hold full hearings on the merits of the overall case, a process that could take years. Caracas has been pressing a historic claim to Guyana's Essequibo region, which encompasses two-thirds of the former British colony, since US oil giant Exxon Mobil discovered crude off its coast in 2015. Guyana maintains that valid land borders were set in 1899 by an arbitration court decision in Paris, a decision its South American neighbour Venezuela has never recognised. In 2018 United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres referred the row to the ICJ, which rules on disputes between UN member countries. Venezuela refused to accept that the court had a mandate to get involved, and has refused to attend any hearings so far. But ICJ president Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf announced on Friday that judges had ruled by 12-4 that the court could deal with the matter. "The court concludes that it has jurisdiction to entertain Guyana's claims concerning the validity of the 1899 Award about the frontier between British Guyana and Venezuela," the court said in its ruling. It said it also had jurisdiction over "the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary dispute between the territories of the parties." The ICJ ruling said that by giving the UN chief power to choose how the dispute would be settled, "including the possibility of recourse to judicial settlement by the International Court of Justice, Guyana and Venezuela consented to its jurisdiction." Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused Guyana of "unilaterally" bringing the territorial dispute -- the subject of a failed UN-sponsored attempt to broker a settlement in 2017 -- to international justice without its agreement. The announcement in May 2015 of a significant discovery of high-quality oil in an offshore concession 190 kilometres (120 miles) off Guyana set off a round of recriminations between Venezuela and its eastern neighbour. Later that year, Guyana announced it would contact Google to remove certain street names from the disputed region that were given Spanish names that seemed to suggest they were part of Venezuela. Guyana is pressing ahead with plans to drill for oil in the disputed waters, with production expected to begin soon. dk/pvh
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