Cab­i­net has not dis­cussed state­ments by am­bas­sador to the UN Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan said yes­ter­day. Khan was asked about the is­sue at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was crit­i­cised on­line and lo­cal­ly last week for state­ments she made at a Ger­man con­fer­ence, in­clud­ing re­marks on health prac­ti­tion­ers in T&T. Khan said yes­ter­day he could not com­ment on ru­mours that she might be re­placed. Asked about Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' state­ment that she had "caused chaos in the health sec­tor," Khan said if she did, there was no chaos now and it had im­proved. Asked about her state­ment that she had been re­placed by Khan, whom she had served as cam­paign man­ag­er, Khan said Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was just one of about 1,000 cam­paign man­agers he'd had. He said the pop­u­la­tion had al­ready pro­nounced on her ut­ter­ances.

Mean­while, Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was ex­pect­ed at her Gene­va of­fice to­day, a staff mem­ber at the of­fice said yes­ter­day.

Act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan said on Tues­day that he had been try­ing to con­tact her to no avail and would con­tin­ue try­ing. When the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed her Gene­va of­fice yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial who on­ly iden­ti­fied her­self as "Eva" said she her­self had been on leave and didn't know if Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis had been in dur­ing the week. She said she ex­pect­ed Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis would be in to­day. The For­eign Af­fairs?Min­istry's com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cial Lisa Daniel Charles said the Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis mat­ter was be­ing dealt with at min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el. A cell num­ber pur­port­ed­ly for?Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis giv­en to the T&T?Guardian by a UNC mem­ber on Tues­day proved to be in­cor­rect. Yes­ter­day, Daniel-Charles said she had no cell con­tact num­ber for Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis.