It was July 27 of 2005 when Tourism Minister Godfrey Smith and Carnival Cruise Line's Vice-President Giora Israel sat side by side at a late evening press conference to say that the Carnival Cruise Terminal project would break ground in August and be completed by summer of 2007. But it didn't happen, and now the Minister says, it's not going to happen. According to him, the Carnival deal has all but slipped away.
The remarkable revelation comes in this week's Flashpoint Column in the Belize Times in which Smith says the cruise terminal is, "not working out as planned. The.partners are in disagreement. The schism appears to be irreconcilable." Smith concludes: "Carnival...is holding out on Belize."
And because of this holdout, Minister Smith, who positions himself as not much more than a well-informed observer in all this, argues that government should seek one last ditch round of negotiations with Carnival to salvage the project. And if that fails, he says the government should then endorse and authorize the construction of the project for Stake Bank Caye being developed by Mike Feinstein and wholly backed by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.
