JAMAICA has named a new high commissioner to Canada, new ambassadors to Japan and Venezuela.

The three, who were named Wednesday by the foreign minister, K D Knight, are:

* High commissioner to Nigeria, Carl Marshall, who will assume the post of High Commissioner to Canada;

* Ambassador to Venezuela, Paul Robotham, who succeeds Ambassador Dr Earl Carr as Ambassador to Japan; and

* Deputy High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Audley Rodriques who succeeds Paul Robotham in Venezuela.

High Commissioner Marshall, whose successor is to be announced shortly, succeeds High Commissioner Raymond Wolfe, who served from August 1998 until February 2003 when he was reassigned to the foreign ministry as under-secretary with responsibility for multilateral affairs.

Ambassador Earl Carr will be retiring after a nine-year stint as Ambassador to Japan. Dr Carr has worked with the Foreign Service from 1977, and served at a number of Jamaican missions overseas including Washington and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.

Ambassador Robotham, who will succeed Ambassador Carr in Tokyo, joined the Jamaican Foreign Service in 1981 and has been posted to the Permanent Mission to the United Nations at Geneva, as well as Embassies in Moscow and Mexico. Prior to his assignment in Venezuela in 1998, he was director, Caribbean and Americas Department at the Foreign Ministry, having worked in a number of areas.

A career diplomat, Audley Rodriques joined the Foreign Service in 1981 and has worked in a number of different areas. From 1992-1966, he was Jamaica’s deputy high commissioner to Nigeria, before returning to the Foreign Ministry where he subsequently acted as director of the International Organisations Department, and then was assigned as deputy high commissioner to the United Kingdom in September 1999.