It's been five years since the Foreign Ministers of both Guatemala and Belize have met with the OAS at their office at the adjacency zone. But today, the Special Representative of the OAS' Secretary General presented their office's 2025 activities to foster bilateral relations and seek a peaceful resolution to the territorial dispute.
It was also an opportunity for both Foreign Ministers to discuss recent incidents of Guatemalan aggression in Belizean territory. At a brief press conference held after the meeting, Minister Fonseca spoke more about the reason for the meeting.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"We met today here at the OAS office, the adjacency zone office at the request of the new special representative for the secretary general of the OAS, her excellency Ambassador Urrejola and both Belize and Guatemala as you know have worked through this office to advance our discussions on the confidence building measures and to advance our work as we move towards the final, definitive, determination of the claim against Belize. So the OAS office has played a very critical role throughout this process for the last 20 years. And today we met really to get a review and report on the ongoing work, the ongoing activities to look at what has taken place in 2025 and also to discuss the future role of the OAS office as we move towards a judgement from the international court of justice so what will be post ICJ role of the OAS office. So that was the main purpose of the meeting today and I'm very glad that the distinguished Foreign Minister of Guatemala, his excellency, Carlos Ramiro MartÃnez joined us and we were able to talk about issues of mutual concern to both Belize and Guatemala and to discuss meaningful ways in which the OAS office can continue to support our efforts to advance peace and stability between our two countries."
