Former ACS secretary general tipped for UN post

Former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), Norman Girvan, is the likely choice to serve as the United Nations Good Officer in the Guyana -Venezuela border dispute, according to a report on www.cananews.net.



\"We have agreed and in support of this, Venezuela also supports this but myself and the Venezuelan foreign minister have to meet with the Secretary General (United Nations) for him to approve this nomination,\" said Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues Birket.



She told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that the meeting is scheduled for later this month and that both countries have welcomed the nomination of Girvan, who served as head of the Trinidad-based ACS Secretariat from 2001to 2006.



Girvan, who is Professorial Research Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International Relations at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), will succeed the late Barbadian diplomat and Oliver Jackman whose death in 2007 had put a hold on the Good Officer process.



Venezuela maintains a 110-year-old claim to the Essequibo region, which amounts to nearly two-thirds of Guyana\'s total land area of 83,000 square miles.



But despite the border dispute, the two countries enjoy a good relationship with Caracas supplying at least 50 per cent of Guyana\'s petroleum needs under the PetroCaribe initiative that President Hugo Chavez started as a means of assisting Caribbean countries acquire oil at concessionary rates.