The Guyana Government strongly deplores the misleading report under the headline ’’Guyana opposition slams Iran uranium deal’’ by the Reuters news agency issued on Wednesday 3rd, February by Neil Marks, its Guyana Correspondent.

The report surprisingly did not mention the press release issued by the Guyana Government on the 27th January correcting the grossly misleading report released by the Associated Press (AP) and which was carried in some local newspapers.

The Reuters report came almost one week after the erroneous AP item and was based solely on speculation offered by Mr. Raphael Trotman, leader of the small opposition Alliance For Change (AFC) political party.

“The Guyana Government abhors the position taken by Reuters to totally base an item on the comment of the leader of a small political party and completely ignore the facts contained in the statement issued by the Government after the identical inaccuracies were carried in an AP report, and a response from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of February 3, 2010, which was requested and acknowledged by the Reuters correspondent in Guyana,” a statement from the Government said last evening.

“Such reporting breaches the traditional high standards of fairness and accuracy associated with dispatches by Reuters and border on sensationalism.

“For the record, President Bharrat Jagdeo said, after returning from a visit to Iran, that that country had agreed to deploy its world class geo-scientific techniques to help Guyana accurately map its mineral wealth deposits and an Iranian mission is due here soon to begin working with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission on the project.

“The President noted that because Iran is in a very active earthquake region, it had developed world class geo sciences labs and was using the same science employed to predict earthquakes to map mineral potential and resources.

“Guyana has long lacked this capability and because of the absence of data on its mineral resources, it had relied on investors to seek prospecting licences and then develop a project in a “hit and miss way”, he said.

“The Iran offer, the President said, opened new vistas and he disclosed that the Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission Mr. William Woolford was excited about the prospects.

“The Guyana Government sees this as part of the recent ploy by local correspondents for foreign media agencies to deliberately distort news stories to give sensational angles that may make them more saleable for overseas media,” the statement concluded