Venezuela finally accredits Ambassador Cheryl Miles

Ambassador Cheryl Miles' credentials presented to Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs

Several months after being appointed Guyana’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Cheryl Miles was accredited on Wednesday.

Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge who made the announcement on Thursday said Miles presented her credentials to Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“That fulfills an obligation that President Maduro had given in November last year,” Greenidge said.

Miles had been identified in November 2015 to fill the top post at the Guyana embassy in Venezuela, following the change in the Guyana government.

Ambassador Miles’s accreditation also comes less than two weeks after the Venezuelan Minister of People’s Power for External Relations declared that “Venezuela will deliver the country’s formal accusation, observations and proposals to the documents presented on the territorial controversy”, while emphasising that the country will reaffirm its “legitimate rights” over the Essequibo territory.

Although Miles had relocated to Caracas, she had not presented her credentials at a time of rocky relations between the two countries over that Spanish-speaking nation’s ongoing claim to the Essequibo Region and the Atlantic Sea offshore that section of Guyana’s territory.

Ambassador Miles began her career in 1974, serving then at the Guyana High Commission in London. In 2008, she returned to Guyana after a nine-year stint as Ambassador to Brazil, but the then Bharrat Jagdeo administration chose to discontinue her service; and so she left, parting amicably with the government and ending 34 years of service to the profession.

With her now being accredited, Minister Greenidge is hoping that, within two weeks, the other appointed Heads of Missions would receive their approval from the respective countries. Guyana has 13 Missions, but only four have ambassadors. Minister Greenidge explained that, the for the most part, requests for agréments have been submitted to several countries.