By Brianna Bennett

Copyright greaterbelize

Fonseca Eyes Coordination Deal Despite Sarstoon River Disputes

Crossing the Sarstoon River is no easy task these days. Without a formal protocol in place, navigating that southernmost boundary between Belize and Guatemala has become increasingly tricky. But despite the recent flare-ups on the Sarstoon, Foreign Minister Francis Fonseca says he’s staying optimistic. He believes both countries can still agree on a coordination mechanism to keep things calm and orderly on the river.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs

“We may not be able to agree on a Sarstoon protocol, but I think our objective is to come to some agreement, some cooperation mechanism, some coordination mechanisms where we understand how we traffic the Sarstoon. I think that’s what’s important, what we call it is not as important as the objective of what we do. So we are still full prepared to engage with Guatemala on this issue. We believe it is critically important for the safety of our security forces, the safety of our citizens who traffic that area that we do have some common understanding about how we traffic that area and respecting our respective territories. So I think there’s still an opportunity for us to achieve that. We had very productive discussions between our respective national security ministers on this issue and many other issues just a few weeks ago and we came out of that meeting feeling very optimistic about the opportunity to have some sort of mechanism, coordination mechanism. So we have not given up on that, we think that that opportunities still lies ahead.”