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Guyana needs to redefine its foreign policies – Norton

Mar 02, 2010 News

The foreign policy issues have become multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary and multi-ministry and as such there is a need to change the country’s approach.
This is according to Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Aubrey Norton, during his presentation in the recently concluded budget debates.
Norton suggested in the House that there is a need to create under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a multi-ministry and multi-agency body that contributes to foreign policy formulation and implementation
He added also that there is a need to expose to diplomatic training, all the relevant agencies and Ministries involved in foreign policy. “We need to restructure our overseas Missions to adapt to the changing foreign policy situation, including appointing competent professional diplomats to head these Missions.” Norton said that Guyanese diplomats have to do the required diplomatic work in the various capitals of the world and at conferences.
This, he said, “will allow us to follow the nuances in foreign policy, prepare the ground for Ministers and the President’s involvement and to exercise influence at various points of the international foreign policy architecture, thus permitting us to effectively pursue our national interests.”
Norton said that there is a need to end the “Presidential parachute diplomacy” as presently practiced, as it has contributed to the narrowing down of our diplomatic capabilities.
Norton stated that the Foreign Affairs Ministry “appears to have been marginalized by Presidential globetrotting while missing that diplomacy is most effective when there is a diplomatic network in which the Ministry works through its embassies and professionals in the Foreign Service.”
He said that these diplomats must be allowed to do the tedious diplomatic work and prepare the base for successful Summit diplomacy at the level of the President.
Substantive Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett chided Norton for this suggestion saying that the foundation work by Guyanese diplomats is done.

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