B.D.F. Commander on Joint Belize-Guatemala Commission Meeting
David Jones
A delegation from Belize, including government and opposition representatives as well as B.D.F. and Police commanders, travelled to Guatemala this past weekend to meet with their counterparts. At the end of what has been termed a successful session, there was a twelve point agreement. Some of those agreements are by nature diplomatic, designed to cool fevered brows and rising tensions in what has been a tempestuous time. But there are some which directly address relations on the front lines, essential in the wake of the murder of Special Constable Danny Conorquie. Commander Jones today told us about one of those agreements which he says is not only essential for future relations, but could lead them to the killer of Conorquie.
Brig. Gen. David Jones, Commander, Belize Defence Force
“There will also be establishing of intelligence sharing mechanisms among the various security organizations. So the intelligence particularly between the military to military, police to police, special branch and their counterparts over there will share information. If this was in place, it would help a great deal with the shooting death of the police officer at Caracol because what could have happened is that they could have called their counterparts immediately and they would have been able to take action over there and wait for these guys to go over. Because we know where the track was that leaded over to, that was heading over to La Rejoya from Valentin and if they had communication, they would have been able to intercept them. So we are going to try to put mechanism in place to share intelligence and to share information with each other so that as an incident occurs in Belize and we believe the perpetrator’s a Guatemalan, we call their authorities and try to get their assistance to stop them on the other side or try to capture them. The main thing that we wanted to achieve was a mechanism to talk to each other immediately as an incident occurs. What the Guatemalan had also pledged is to assist us as much as they are capable to try and find the person who committed the murder of Danny Conorquie. They have intelligence information on that incident, our police department has intelligence information and they are now sharing and in the process of working together to find out who this person is. We already have an idea, we know which he comes from and we suspect that he is the person that owns the same horses that we had captured. So it shouldn’t take very long, as long as they cooperate with us, we should be able to find who committed that murder. Personally for me, what I wanted them to do was to agree to try and do more. I did not believe that Guatemala has been doing all they should or could to stop the incursion within Belize. They have pledged to support that. They will work closely with our military, with our security forces, with our police and we will work jointly together to try and stop their civilians from coming across.”
Guatemala has also committed to pumping resources into some of the villagers along the border, since the encroachments and plunder of our resources are motivated by the need of an impoverished people.
