A Crisis is Averted as Tensions De-escalate Between Belize and Guatemala

Prime Minister Dean Barrow returned to Belize from New York on Sunday after holding discussions with the United Nations, the Organization of American States and others on the aggressive stand by Guatemala, following the killing of a minor inside the Chiquibul. Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales and other high-ranking officials ramped up the rhetoric and mobilized its military, causing some concern and consternation if not outright panic. Thousands of Guatemalan troops were deployed to the Sarstoon in the south and along the adjacency zone in the west. Today, PM Barrow said that the crisis has been averted; that Guatemala is not going to invade Belize, if that was ever the plan. The announcement was made today at a press conference; sharing the head table were the Deputy Prime Minister, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and National Security, Attorney-General and military commanders. But all that’s done, says PM Barrow.

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I am wholly satisfied, based on the N.S.C.’s review of all the facts and its discussion of the pathway forward, that the immediate crisis provoked by Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales’ extraordinary address to his nation after the exchange of fire between Guatemalan civilians-who fired first-and the BDF leading to the death of a Guatemalan minor, is over. I am convinced that diplomacy, Belize’s invocation of the Confidence Building Agreement, and its call for peace and the de-escalation of the threat and tension created by the Guatemalan response and the measures that had been announced by President Morales, has worked. Our position has been noted and supported by the international community, and ultimately accepted by Guatemala. There has therefore been success in defusing the situation to a point where the return to normalcy has begun, and the two countries can start again to work on the reiteration and expansion of the protocols governing the complex relations between us.”