Guyana Chronicle
May 19, 2001

NEW Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Office of the President, Mr Rudy Insanally will be sworn in by Acting President Sam Hinds at 08:00 hrs on Monday, at the Office of the President.

This was announced yesterday by the Office of the President.

The career diplomat has for several years been Guyana's Permanent Representative at the United Nations and is one of four technocrat ministers President Bharrat Jagdeo has said will be appointed to his Cabinet.

President Jagdeo is this weekend in Toronto, Canada on official business.

Insanally's appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Office of the President, follows the precedent set when former Foreign Minister Clement Rohee was, for his first year in the post, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Office of the President under the late President Cheddi Jagan, an official explained yesterday.

Rohee is now Minister of Foreign Trade and International Cooperation.

Shortly after his swearing-in Monday, the new Foreign Minister will officiate as the chairperson of the Fourth Meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations, being hosted by the Guyana Government.

The opening session of the two-day forum will be at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown at 09:00 hrs, and chairing the meeting will be Minister Insanally's first official duty after assuming the post.

The remaining sessions will be at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat in the Bank of Guyana Building, Georgetown.

The minister-designate yesterday afternoon met CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington and other officials at the CARICOM Secretariat ahead of next week's meeting.

Insanally will join his CARICOM counterparts to deliberate on measures to consolidate the region's foreign policy on a number of issues on the regional hemisphere and international agenda.

The meeting will also consider the status of border issues involving Guyana and Belize, which have longstanding issues with Venezuela and Guatemala respectively.

The forum will also focus on the furthering of CARICOM's relations with specific countries, including Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, the secretariat said.

Other matters on the agenda include issues from a CARICOM perspective in relation to the Organisation of American States (OAS); the United Nations; the region's new initiatives for cooperation with Japan and India as well as developments in Haiti; the resolutions from the Third Meeting of the Association of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP); the region's review of the Third Summit of the Americas held in Quebec, Canada in April and participation at the proposed Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Summit scheduled for December 2001, as well as the Second European Union-Latin American Countries (EU-LAC) Summit billed for May 2002 in Spain.

A preparatory meeting of officials was held on Thursday and yesterday at the CARICOM Secretariat.