Raphael John-Lall

The Gov­ern­ment of Guyana has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of politi­cian and busi­ness­man Dr Richard Van West-Charles as the new am­bas­sador to Venezuela.

This was re­port­ed by Guyana’s Sec­re­tary of For­eign Af­fairs, Robert Per­saud, through his ac­count on the so­cial net­work X on Wednes­day.

Per­saud’s X post said: “Wish­ing a suc­cess­ful tour of du­ty to our new Am­bas­sador to Venezuela Dr Van West-Charles as he pre­pares for Cara­cas on Jan­u­ary 15 af­ter which he will present his let­ters of cre­den­tial to the pres­i­dent of Venezuela.”

Per­saud con­firmed that the date of de­par­ture will be Jan­u­ary 15 af­ter which West-Charles will present his let­ters of cre­dence to the pres­i­dent of Venezuela, Nico­las Maduro.

Guyana was await­ing Venezuela’s ac­cep­tance of the diplo­mat’s cre­den­tials for sev­er­al months.

West-Charles is the son-in-law of late Guyanese pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham, who was al­so the found­ing leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Con­gress (PNC).

He served as Head of the Guyana Wa­ter In­cor­po­rat­ed (GWI) un­der the for­mer AP­NU+AFC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Mean­while, the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary to Guyana is Car­los Amador Perez Sil­va who pre­vi­ous­ly served as Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T up to 2022.

The ap­point­ment of West-Charles as the new Am­bas­sador to Venezuela comes at a time of height­ened ten­sion be­tween the two coun­tries over the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

In De­cem­ber, both coun­tries met in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines where they signed the Ar­gyle Agree­ment be­fore Cari­com and oth­er South Amer­i­can lead­ers, which promised that no mil­i­tary force will be used to solve the bor­der dis­pute.

How­ev­er, ten­sions rose again at the end of De­cem­ber when the British sent a war­ship to Guyana which Venezuela de­nounced and led to Venezuela host­ing mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es with al­most 6,000 sol­diers and show­ing off mil­i­tary hard­ware such as fight­er jets and mis­siles.