G-77 12th South-South Conference on Cooperation between Developing Countries (IFCC) fraught with Venezuelan in-fighting!

United Nations (UN) High Level Eminent Personalities nominee, former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Milos Alcalay has joined Costa Rica's Jorge Urbina and Nicaragua's Valdrack Jaentschke to attend the June 9-12, G-77 12th South-South Conference on Cooperation between Developing Countries (IFCC) in Yamoussoukro, Ivorayt Coast presided over by Antigua & Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer with the host-nation's President Laurent Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro in attendance.

Ambassador Milos Alcalay said that, together, the countries of the South constitute a force representing two thirds of the United Nations, but that such a force will really only be beneficial when the links betgween them increase ... therefore his (Alcalay's) emphasis on strengthening ties between the Ivory Coast and Latin America, Venezuela. The Venezuelan diplomat also expressed the hope that President Gbagbo would make a State Visit visit Venezuela to realize the extent of South-South cooperation as proposed by President Gbagbo in the BancoSur (Bank of the South) initiative.

While welcoming the Ivory Coast initiative the warm welcome accorded to them, Ambassadors Alcalay, Jaentschke and Urbina confirmed innovative ideas advanced by President Gbagbo as a win-win relationship between emerging countries on the one hand and the creation of the Bank for Investment South.

Conference was, however, interrupted by Venezuela's Ambassador to Benin, Reina Arratia, heading a delegation from Caracas, who presented a strong diplomatic note of protest over Alcalay's presence at the G77 event despite the fact that he was there exclusively as an official representative of the United Nations, and not the Venezuelan government, with whom he has had divergent political opinions since his resignation from the Venezuelan Foreign Service (MRE) several years ago. He is currently active in Venezuelan politics as a spokesperson for opposition leader Julio Borges.

Alcalay says "fortunately the conference did not attach much importance to the Venezuelan ambassador's protest other than that it showed the povertys of the positions adopted by Chavez' foreign diplomacy ... at a time when the govenrment has expressed the wish to rectify incorrect policies, it would be opportune for it to revise this king of attitude of 'exclusion' and to assume a form of diplomacy which puts value on institutional efforts in South-South cooperation where Venezuela would come out the winner!"