And turning now to other news….
On Tuesday night we told you about the Guatemalan Navy Vessel seen prominently in Belizean waters. Today we asked the Foreign Ministers what they are going to do about the incursion:
Francis Fonseca - Minister of Foreign Affairs
"A few days ago, the Coast Guard responded to it immediately when they were notified about the presence of this vessel, and they responded to the site immediately. When they got there, they identified it as a GAF vessel within Belizean waters. They followed established protocol. They went up to the vessel. They informed the crew on board who they were and they advised them that they were in Belizean waters. They had a discussion, a short exchange, and the Coast Guard then escorted the GAF vessel out of Belizean waters."
"Yes, we do send diplomatic notes. And we have, you know, many, many diplomatic notes. But we go beyond that. We go beyond that. We have, just as I had in Washington, we had direct exchanges. I discussed the matter of the tensions in the Sarstoon with the Guatemalan foreign minister. We made it very clear to him our position. The Prime Minister had spoken to President Arevalo on more than one occasion about these matters. We have had exchanges between our Minister of Defense and the Guatemalan minister of defense on these issues. So we take these matters very, very, very seriously."
"Are you concerned about the type of vessel?"
"I don't want to say a ship, but it was a vessel of much larger size. Yes. Yeah, we are concerned about that. And, but, let me add, you know, we raised this issue as well with the Group of Friends. So we make these things known in front of Guatemala. And we outlined our concerns about the types of vessels we are seeing in Belizean waters. So, yes, we are concerned about that. And I can say that, in, you know, in about two weeks' time will have a meeting between our defense ministry and the Guatemalan defense ministry, to discuss, again, discuss these activities."
"Are we able to share the reason they gave us why the vessel was in our waters? Generally, they give the same excuse each time, which is that, you know, they've lost their way and they didn't know where they were, that sort of thing. So the good news is that there was no tension. They did not resist. They, they followed the instructions of our Belize Coast Guard, and they were escorted out of our Belizean waters."
