BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – Overseas Affairs Minister Eamon Courtenay says the discussions with the President-elect of Guatemala, Bernardo Arevalo, throughout his temporary go to right here on Friday have been “very fruitful, very cordial and, I believe, very optimistic.”
Arevalo, who’s to be sworn into workplace on January 14 subsequent 12 months, held talks with Prime Minister John Briceño and Courtenay.
The go to got here a day after Guatemala’s highest court docket ordered Congress to ensure the president-elect’s swearing-in after accepting an enchantment towards the prosecutor’s workplace’s efforts to stop him from assuming energy.
“When President-elect Arevalo was elected, he and Prime Minister had a courtesy name shortly after that when the Prime Minister congratulated him, and he promised to go to Belize earlier than he took workplace,” Courtenay stated, including that the go to final Friday was “in achievement of that promise.
“It was not an official go to as a result of he’s not but in workplace, so the discussions have been very casual. He got here accompanied by the overseas minister-designate and an advisor. We spoke about our bilateral relations and our must restart issues.
“We spoke about commerce, and we spoke about migration, cooperation and drug smuggling, anti-drug smuggling, and he pledged that after he took workplace, he wished to reinvigorate the discussions and to maneuver the agenda ahead.”
The Overseas Minister stated the discussions additionally concerned Central America and the Central American Integration System (SICA), which includes seven Central American international locations and the Dominican Republic.
Guatemala and Belize are members of SICA, the financial and political grouping fashioned in 1991.
Courtenay stated that there had been “an trade of views” between the president-elect and Briceno on “a number of the challenges” on SICA and “after all, we spoke about wider issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, and, you already know, a number of the issues.”
Guatemala and Belize have a long-standing border dispute and have voted in separate referendums to ask the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to resolve on the dispute.
Guatemala acknowledged the independence of Belize originally of the Nineties. Nonetheless, it has but to just accept the borders and claims 11,000 sq. kilometers, about half the territory of the previous British colony.
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