BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Courtenay says the discussions with the President-elect of Guatemala, Bernardo Arevalo, during his brief visit here on Friday were “very fruitful, very cordial and, I think, very positive.”
Arevalo, who is to be sworn into office on January 14 next year, held talks with Prime Minister John Briceño and Courtenay.
The visit came a day after Guatemala’s highest court ordered Congress to guarantee the president-elect’s swearing-in after accepting an appeal against the prosecutor’s office’s efforts to prevent him from assuming power.
“When President-elect Arevalo was elected, he and Prime Minister had a courtesy call shortly after that when the Prime Minister congratulated him, and he promised to visit Belize before he took office,” Courtenay said, adding that the visit last Friday was “in fulfillment of that promise.
“It was not an official visit because he is not yet in office, so the discussions were very informal. He came accompanied by the foreign minister-designate and an advisor. We spoke about our bilateral relations and our need to restart things.
“We spoke about trade, and we spoke about migration, cooperation and drug smuggling, anti-drug smuggling, and he pledged that once he took office, he wished to reinvigorate the discussions and to move the agenda forward.”
The Foreign Minister said the discussions also involved Central America and the Central American Integration System (SICA), which involves seven Central American countries and the Dominican Republic.
Guatemala and Belize are members of SICA, the economic and political grouping formed in 1991.
Courtenay said that there had been “an exchange of views” between the president-elect and Briceno on “some of the challenges” on SICA and “of course, we spoke about wider things in Latin America and the Caribbean, and, you know, some of the things.”
Guatemala and Belize have a long-standing border dispute and have voted in separate referendums to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to decide on the dispute.
Guatemala recognized the independence of Belize at the beginning of the 1990s. Still, it has yet to accept the borders and claims 11,000 square kilometers, about half the territory of the former British colony.
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