Not quite everything associated with the Rio summit was good news, although one of the items of not-so-good news had nothing to do with the government. It came in the form of a statement made at the press conference held by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro who, it must be said, did the local press the courtesy of bringing an interpreter so there could be some interchange between him and the English-speaking media. The impression gleaned from that interchange was that the Venezuelan government might be tending to the view that a bilateral approach was the preferred modus operandi for addressing the border controversy.

The controversy has been in the hands of the UN Secretary-General for many years as provided for under the Geneva Agreement, and the current means of settlement under Article 33 of the UN Charter selected by him and agreed to by both Venezuela and Guyana is the Good Officer process. At the moment that process is stalled because the Good Officer, who was the Barbadian Oliver Jackman, died in January. According to Guyana’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Dr Odeen Ishmael, the “Venezuelan side has so far not commented on a replacement.” Whether the delay is a reflection of unease in Caracas about searching for a solution under multilateral auspices is simply not clear at the moment.

Assuming that moving away from the UN Good Offices context is what Minister Maduro is advocating, it should be observed that we have been down this road before over the last twelve years. The first occasion was when then Venezuelan Foreign Minister Miguel