THE Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that Agrément was received from the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil for the appointment of George Wilfred Talbot as Guyana’s next resident Ambassador to Brazil.A release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday noted that Mr. Talbot is a career diplomat who joined the Foreign Service in 1993. He currently serves as the Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations, a position he held since January 2012.

He is also the current non-resident Ambassador to the State of Israel and non-resident High Commissioner to the Republic of Namibia.

Mr. Talbot has extensive experience in multilateral diplomacy. He has represented his country at the UN and at other international fora on economic, social, political and related issues. He headed the delegation in New York during Guyana’s chairmanship of the Rio Group in 2006, and the Union of South American Nations in 2011.

He has held several posts on UN intergovernmental bodies, including Chairman of the Economic and Financial Committee of the UN General Assembly at its sixty-seventh session (September 2012 – September 2013).

Other posts include Vice-President of the UNICEF Executive Board; Vice-President, High-Level Committee on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (now High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation); Vice-Chairman, United Nations Forum on Forests; Vice-Chairman, Commission on Sustainable Development; and Vice-President of the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board.

More recently, he served as a co-facilitator of preparations for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which adopted the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in July 2015.

Mr Talbot began his public service career in Guyana with the Department of International Economic Cooperation in the Ministry of Finance in 1991. He served from October 1991 to June 1992 as Associate Lecturer of Spanish (part-time) at the University of Guyana. Mr Talbot joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993.

Previously, he worked in the private sector from 1981 to 1986.He also holds an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; and a B.A. in Modern Languages (Spanish/French) from the University of Guyana. He is fluent in English (mother tongue) and Spanish, and conversant in French and Portuguese.