And keeping it on the Sarstoon River, today we asked Ambassador Alexis Rosado for an update on the long-delayed Sarstoon protocol.
Through the efforts of Wil Maheia and the Belize Territorial Volunteers you've seen how the Guatemalan armed forces stationed at the mouth of the Sarstoon continue to harass Belizeans trying to travel through the river.
Today, the Ambassador told us that basically, the discussions with the Guatemalan Government on a protocol for the Sarstoon remains stalled because our neighbors don't want to engage on the topic. Here's how he explained it today:
H.E. Alexis Rosado - Belize Ambassador to Guatemala
"We have been calling on our neighbors and Guatemala to engage with us to come up with a set of confidence building measures for the Sarstoon. We recognize that until such time as the dispute arising from Guatemala's claim is resolved, until such time we will be needing some form of confidence building measures to avoid tensions and should incidents occur along the border in the area then we will have to have ways and mechanisms in order to deal with them. Initially Guatemala agreed to engage with us and then they retracted and then they agreed again to engage again and then they have been kind of resistant to the notion of coming up with some mechanisms. We keep trying and then international community keeps calling on them to engage with us. But in such things you need two to tango and we can't force anybody to do something if they don't want, but we keep trying."
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