Foreign ministry think tank to meet next month
Stabroek News
March 11, 2003
Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally is planning to convene the first meeting of his ministry's advisory council next month.
The establishment of the council is one of the Foreign Ministry's priority projects this year and is intended to provide it with a pool of expertise on which it could draw from time to time.
Speaking with Stabroek News yesterday, Insanally, who returned last week from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Malaysia, said invitations to the first meeting were being sent out.
He explained that he was reluctant to disclose the names of the persons who were being invited, as some of them might not have received their invitations yet. However, he said that those being invited included Guyanese resident overseas who had demonstrated their expertise in this area and that the majority of the members would be the Guyanese experts who reside locally.
The Foreign Minister said the plan was to have two meetings a year of all the members who would discuss the whole gamut of issues but that a smaller number would be called on from time to time to deal with specific matters. He added that he had sought to identify expertise wherever it existed without regard to past associations.
Commenting on the proceedings of the NAM summit, Insanally said that the preoccupation was with the situation concerning Iraq and that the consensus was to avoid a war at all costs.
He said support was also given to the promotion of the New Human Global Order which Guyana had been promoting for some time and for Guyana's position on Venezuela's spurious claim to its territory.
