A Guyana team will be heading to Antigua within a few days to once again meet with United Nations (UN) representative Dag Nylander to discuss the Venezuela border controversy as an end-of-year deadline for substantial progress on the matter approaches.
Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge is optimistic that Nylander will complete his work and that UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres will stand by a commitment he made that he will decide by December 31st on the matter being taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
On December 16, 2016, in a much-anticipated decision, Guterres’ predecessor, Ban Ki-moon decided that the Good Offices process on the decades-old border controversy would be given one more year and if by the end of 2017 “significant progress” was not made, the case would move to the ICJ.