ODEEN Ishmael has been appointed Ambassador of Guyana to the State of Kuwait, in keeping with a commitment to strengthen relations between Guyana and that country following the visit to Kuwait of President Bharrat Jagdeo in January and that of Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al Hamed Al Jaber Al Saber to Guyana in July. According to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Guyana has received the agreement of the Government of Kuwait for Ishmael to be appointed as resident Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Guyana to the State of Kuwait.
Ambassador Ishmael served in Washington from June 1993 to October 2003, and was appointed as Ambassador to Venezuela in November 2003, where he is currently serving. He is expected to take up his appointment in Kuwait shortly, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Guyana and Kuwait established diplomatic relations on August 17, 1995.
Since 1993, Ishmael participated as a member of Guyana’s delegation at the UN General Assembly and represented the country at the OAS General Assemblies and other specialised meetings of this body in various countries of the hemisphere.
He has headed Guyana’s delegation to meetings of the Regional Negotiating Machinery of CARICOM from 1997 to 2001, and as an OAS-trained trade negotiator, participated in the initial stages of negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Ishmael was also a member of Guyana’s delegation to the summit of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999.
From 1997, Ambassador Ishmael led Guyana’s delegation to meetings of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). He also participated in the Summits of Heads of States of the OIC in Tehran in 1997 and Qatar in 2000.
After becoming Ambassador to Venezuela in December 2003, he represented Guyana at meetings of the Latin American Economic System (SELA), headquartered in Caracas. He was elected vice chairman of this organisation’s governing body, the Latin American Council, for the period 2004-2006 and was elected as Chairman of the body in November 2009.
In July of this year, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, paid a short visit to Guyana with a high-level delegation that included members of that country’s private sector.
During the visit here, Guyana and Kuwait signed five technical cooperation agreements which sought to encourage cooperation of the private sector through the establishment of joint ventures; avoiding tax being levied twice on the remuneration or any other money earned by a Guyanese or Kuwaiti in the respective countries; allowing the two countries to develop trade relations, expanding the exchange of goods and services, encouraging participation in trade fairs and international markets and also exchanges of commercial delegations; establishing a joint commission that would monitor the cooperation programmes between the two countries in the economic, commercial, investment and financial fields; and permitting the two countries to develop bilateral air services and to promote international cooperation in the air services field.
