As you heard in that interview, the breaking point for the PUP came when they were dis-invited to the OAS General Assembly which was held earlier this week in the Dominican Republic. The reason for the dis-invite? They were told the Guatemalan Foreign Minister wouldn't have had time to meet.
Still, a resolution touching on the Belize Guatemala issue came out of that meeting, and the PUP says if they had been there, they would have made a difference:...
Hon. John Briceno, PUP Party Leader
"We are deeply disappointed in the resolution that was passed. The resolution clearly shows no progress made towards stopping Guatemala from annexing our portion of the Sarstoon River. In fact the resolution deals mostly about restricting our efforts to bring or to inform the international community about Guatemala's illegal annexation of our portion of the Sarstoon. It seems as if the foreign minister has been hoodwinked by Carlos Raul, the Guatemalan Foreign Minister. I believe that the foreign minister did not get proper advice or he, again, I don't know what he was thinking. But when the resolution refers to the agreement of 2000, between Belize and Guatemala, which is no longer in effect. Guatemala skillfully had that included in the agreement. Why? Because that basically gives a gag order that we can't say anything unless we do it jointly and did not use or refer to the confidence building measures on 2005, which would have given us more latitude to be able to go and internationalize what is happening right now here in the Sarstoon and secondly, in that resolution, it says nothing about Guatemala's aggression, about Guatemala's annexation of the Sarstoon. These are two very important points that the foreign minister fell asleep or overlooked. Certainly with this resolution that was passed, if we were there, we certainly would have strengthen that solution and secondly, that we can take the opportunity to talk to all the member states about what is taking place. Because unfortunately what is happening to us, I believe, is that our foreign minister goes to great lengths to point out that he and the foreign minister from Guatemala are such great friends and he goes to such great lengths to be nice and courteous and almost being careful on what message he wants to say so as not to offend the foreign minister from Guatemala."
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