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Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment on Fri­day re­ject­ed a rul­ing from the Unit­ed Na­tions’ top court or­der­ing the South Amer­i­can coun­try to re­frain from hold­ing elec­tions for of­fi­cials who sup­pos­ed­ly would over­see a re­source-rich re­gion in neigh­bour­ing Guyana that both na­tions claim as their own.

The gov­ern­ment of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in a state­ment un­der­scored its his­tor­i­cal po­si­tion to not rec­og­nize the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice and as­sert­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al law does not al­low the body to “in­ter­fere” or “at­tempt to pro­hib­it” an elec­tion.