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Guatemalan Foreign Minister to Chair the XLIII OAS General Assembly

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, Fernando Carrera, head of delegation of the host country of the forty-third regular session of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), was elected today, during the first plenary session, to preside over the deliberations of this meeting of foreign ministers, which was inaugurated yesterday and will go on until tomorrow in Antigua, Guatemala.

Prior to the first plenary session, the Permanent Representative of The Bahamas to the OAS, Ambassador Elliston Rahming, served as provisional president, in keeping with the order of precedence established by lot by the OAS Permanent Council. Ambassador Rahming, turning the chair over to Foreign Minister Carrera, said that he anticipated that “the deliberations that we are about to hold under your leadership in the context of this General Assembly will be a great success.”

The Guatemalan Foreign Minister addressed the member state delegations, which had elected him by acclamation. He thanked the delegation of Argentina for nominating him as well as the delegation of Belize for seconding that nomination. He also thanked all the delegations present for their support.

During the first plenary session, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Vuk Jeremic, drew the delegations’ attention to the importance of the central theme selected for the meeting in Guatemala: “For a Comprehensive Policy against the World Drug Problem in the Americas.”

Likewise, he recalled that the United Nations Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation towards an Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem, together with the Report on the Drug Problem in the Americas, prepared recently by the OAS, and the declaration that would emanate from the Assembly would be “valuable instruments that would serve as benchmarks for the global community.”

President Jeremic commented on the efforts he had made during his term to enhance collaboration between the UN and the OAS and “to benefit from the enormous potential of the Western Hemisphere.” He thanked the OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, for his leadership in promoting socially inclusive economic development and for “the invaluable contribution he makes as part of the Group of High-Level Advisors to the President of the General Assembly, which has helped us reflect on the future of multilateralism in an increasingly interdependent and globalized world.”

Lastly, President Jeremic extended an invitation to delegates to participate in the thematic debate on inequality which the United Nations would hold in New York in July and in which Secretary General Insulza would take part. The former Foreign Minister of Serbia announced that the debate would examine matters related to access to opportunities and would seek to contribute to the discussions on the definition of sustainable development goals, in keeping with the results of the Rio+20 Summit.

The agenda for the first plenary session, in which the OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, and the Assistant Secretary General, Albert Ramdin, participated, also included adoption of the agenda and the schedule of the meeting, as well as the installation of the General Committee, which will be chaired by the Permanent Representative of Panama to the OAS and current Chair of the Permanent Council of the Organization, Arturo Ulises Vallarino.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

The video of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org

Reference: E-225/13