And, that 7News archival interview is part of the historical record on the Guatemalan claim, Shoman dug much deeper. He went into the official records in London, Washington and Mexico City - to see diplomatic cables and confidential notes exchanged by senior diplomats at the time. This gave him a unique perspective since Shoman was a part of many of the meetings which those diplomatic cables describe or summarize.
We asked him if he found anything in there which surprised him:..
Assad Shoman, Author
"One of them was for example in 1975 when you had the Commonwealth Heads of government meeting in Kingston Jamaica and George Price went there and he had support from the Caribbean countries and he got support from the others and the British were trying to not have anything stated in the resolution about territorial integrity, because they wanted to give away our land, so they didn't want that in the resolution an so they took it out. They actually succeed in taking it out. But the way it's written, it's obvious. You know how the British goes. What I didn't know is that the Foreign Minister went on Washington to meet with his people there and he actually said if George Price continues with his foolishness we will have to take our troops out. I didn't know it had reach that point."
"It was a very difficult game that Price and the rest of us had to play. We had to keep the British on our side. We couldn't alienate them because they were the ones defending the country. On the other hand we couldn't do what they wanted, which was to give up land or give us sovereignty. So many times Price had to say alright I will consider that, because they were telling him that they and the US - consider that. But he never meant to agree to it. But sometimes they thought he did and then afterwards when it turned out otherwise they say this man is going back on his words and things like that. But that was all part of the game that had to be played to get to the endgame which was Belize with total sovereignty in terms of Guatemala and territorial integrity."
Shoman's book is being launched for sale right now at the Image Factory.
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