Act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan has been man­dat­ed to re­port on the is­sue of a speech made by Am­bas­sador to the UN Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, ac­cord­ing to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed. Mo­hammed said Ram­bachan was man­dat­ed to speak with Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis af­ter con­tro­ver­sial state­ments she made at a Ger­man diplo­ma­cy con­fer­ence last week, elic­it­ing wide­spread crit­i­cism.

Ram­bachan said on Tues­day he had been try­ing to reach her, but was un­suc­cess­ful. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said he would be re­port­ing to For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston?Dook­er­an on the mat­ter when Dook­er­an re­turns to work next week. Asked the pos­si­ble out­come of the Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis is­sue and if she would be re­moved, Ram­bachan said it is a "con­fi­den­tial mat­ter."

When the T&T?Guardian called Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' Gene­va of­fice at 8 am (T&T time)?yes­ter­day, a woman who said she was a mis­sion of­fi­cial said Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was not in of­fice and could not com­ment on when she would be. The of­fi­cial de­clined to give her name.