Guyana will negotiate an anti-corruption bilateral agreement with the United States.

A press release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) said Presi-dent Bharrat Jagdeo made this disclosure during a television interview yesterday.

"It is not only terrorism that concerns us; poverty is also a concern… and we should not await the multilateral agreement on corruption. I would like to move forward with the US to have a bilateral agreement which could be negotiated speedily to share information on illegal accounts that Guyanese may have in the US," GINA quoted the President as saying

"We want to share information on corrupt government officials and corrupt people in the private sector. Many people may get accounts based on tax evasion, money laundering…"

GINA said the President's remarks were in response to the US pushing for "strong language on terrorism and corruption", at the special Summit of the Americas held in Monterrey, Mexico, last week.

On the first day of the summit, US President George W. Bush issued a ban, effective immediately, that bars entry to the United States to those "who have committed, participated in, or are beneficiaries of corruption in the performance of public functions" if they have "serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States." The ban on travel to the United States also includes the family members of those who have participated in governmental corruption.

However, on the eve of the summit, several Latin American nations resisted US efforts to get them to commit to a proposal that would exclude "the most corrupt governments … from regional meetings."

While backing anti-corruption measures, Brazil, which led the opposition, criticized the US proposal. Brazil was strongly backed by Argentina and Venezuela, which questioned who will decide on whether governments were corrupt and posited that mechanism could be used as political retaliation against any government.

Meanwhile, according to GINA, the "request has not yet materalised.

However, US Ambasdor in Guyana Roland Bullen is following up on the issue and keeping him up to date on developments, the Head-of-State said."