1954 Geneva Conference moving South". At the same time, 52,000 people from the South went North, mostly Viet Minh members and their families. The US replaced the French as a political backup for Ngo Dinh Diem, the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, who asserted his power in the South. The Geneva conference had not provided any specific mechanisms for the national elections planned for 1956, and Diem refused to hold them by citing that the South had not signed and were not bound to the Geneva Accords and that it was impossible to hold free elections in the communist North. Instead,
Geneva Agreement (1966) Guyana should have signed it. On the 52nd anniversary of the international treaty being signed in Switzerland, Venezuelan Government has reaffirmed it's commitment to the Geneva Agreement. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza declared that the Bolivarian nation was ready to comply to the agreement. President Nicolas Maduro has called on the Venezuelan people to defend their "legitimate and non-renounceable" territorial rights over the Essequibo region. Defense Minister Vladamir Padrino Lopez stresses that Venezuelans should continue to claim their territory and stated on his social media "The Sun of Venezuela is born in the Essequibo." The agreement was criticized in Guyana