PM says he won’t reprimand Foreign Minister for his comment

While the British Forces do their best to secure their weapons cache in Belize, the shockwaves from a verbal explosion by Foreign Minister Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington while at the Organization of American States headquarters in Washington, are still agitating the public. Members of the opposition and others have called on the Prime Minister to remove the foreign minister because of his now infamous ‘artificial border’ comment. But today, the Prime Minister stood by Elrington and said Quote ‘‘hell no.”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“I believe that the reaction is overblown. I really think that it’s exaggerated; it is not justified by the facts. I am prepared to concede that in the context of what was said, the whole incident is very regrettable. But there are those who legitimately quarreled with what Minister Elrington and I think every allowance must be made for the strength of their feeling and the genuineness of their feeling. But how you get to there to calling for his removal, which would suggest that what is involved is more than some kind of syntactical misunderstanding. This would suggest that, as a matter of substance, Mister Elrington’s position as Foreign Minister is untenable. I cannot see that at all. I think that people have raked him over the coals—maybe deservedly so—and we ought now to move on. I can say quite clearly, there is no way in hell I would remove mister Elrington for something like this. I checked with two members of the Belize negotiating team, one of whom is a P.U.P. member, represents the opposition on the negotiating team to ascertain whether in terms of the meetings of substance that took place with the Guatemalans after which there was this press interview, whether in that meeting Minister Elrington in anyway let down the side; in anyway did not maintain the official position of this country, the agreed position. And the answer was no! Were I minister Elrington I would have said ladies and gentlemen, I used the words to mean a certain thing but it is clear that words often have more than one meaning. There were those who understood it differently and in the context of something as sensitive as our sovereignty, the sanctity of our borders, it was regrettable. I, therefore, apologize and I will move on.”