Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“I want to place on record, you know, our absolute confidence in the Belize defense force, our security forces. I think we as a nation, we need to be very proud of them. We need to commend them for not only their courage, but their calm, and their professionalism. So I want to say that, first of all. Secondly, with, as I’ve stated before, when it comes to Guatemala, the people of Belize have given the government a mandate. This was done in 2019. We had a referendum. The people of this country gave the government of Belize a mandate to pursue a peaceful, definitive resolution of this matter. So that is the path that Belize is on, a peaceful resolution of this matter. Now that doesn’t mean that while we pursue that peaceful resolution, that we don’t have to be vigilant in terms of protecting our territorial integrity and our national sovereignty, we always have to do that. And in fact, that is priority number one, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government of Belize. So we certainly have condemned what took place over the past few days, separate incidents, including the BTV, the placing of the flag illegally on the Sarstoon. We have condemned that. We have engaged with, not only bilaterally with Guatemala, but of course, we have engaged with our friends of Belize, with all of our diplomatic partners. We are working with them to address this issue in a structured way. So, you know, it’s a very, very important issue. We are concerned about the rising tensions and the aggression of the military, the Guatemalan armed forces. But we also recognize what is happening, and we understand what is happening and why it’s happening. But we’re very happy that other, organizations like Caricom have come out and issued very strong statements in support of Belize. Copal has done so as well. So we’re going to continue to pursue, as I said, a diplomatic approach to this, a peaceful resolution of this matter, while at the same time standing up very strongly in protection of Belize’s territorial sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our national sovereignty.”