7 News Belize

Belize/Guatemala Relations Not On Agenda
posted (June 4, 2013)
And while Belize's diplomats are in Guatemala at an OAS event, there are no meetings on the agenda to discuss Belize- Guatemala relations and the way forward. As Belize's ambassador to Guatemala explains, there's just no time for it in the hectic General Assembly schedule.

H.E Fred Martinez - Belize's Ambassador to Guatemala
"Within the context of the General Assembly there will not be a bi-lateral between the two ministers. I think the agenda is so crazy that to sit down to dedicate enough time, two - three hours by both foreign ministers is going to be practically impossible. I must mention that there was bi-lateral meeting at the technical level which always occurs, the highly working group met regularly. It met last week to look at the office of the OAS at the border, what Guatemala refers to as the adjacency zone, to look at measures of cooperation and specifically we brought up the issue of the de-forestation problem. The fact that Belize will go to an all out campaign to internationalize the cause and to focus attention of the international community of what is happening along our border line by the population pressures of Peten. It is a serious problem, it isn't a problem of deforestation of people cutting down and doing illegal logging, it is a matter of the whole water shed that deals with the rivers that flow into Peten and into Belize that provides the vital fluid for all of us. So it's from that point of view that we are approaching it and also the tension that it creates between the two countries when we have these incidents."

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