On the Ground Report from Placencia
Marleni Cuellar
Marleni Cuellar is also in Placencia and has the latest on the meeting between Taiwan and Central America.
Marleni Cuellar
“Good night! Of course I am here at the Belize Ocean’s Club in Placencia where there is actually a lot taking place here at the moment. As you have been able to see through the different coverage and mentions that we’ve made, there are a number of summits. There is the main summit that is taking place over the next three days. Some of the activities leading up to it include the meeting that is concluding at this very moment. That meeting is the sixteenth meeting of the Joint Commission of Cooperation Among Developing Countries of Central America and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Now attending that meeting, we had delegations from the Republic of China (Taiwan); we have the Foreign Minister David Lin here. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemlaa, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic are also represented. And we also have representative of the General Secretariat of SICA. So they have been essentially working to come up with the allocation for the 2015-2016 Cooperation Period. At this time, we can say that they have agreed on twenty-three million U.S. dollars for this region, so that is what will be allocated to SICA countries at this time. Very interesting of course this is a diplomatic meeting and there are many things that will take place in terms of agreements and signing agreements over the next three days. One of the things that took place just now is that SICA nations attempted to sign a communiqué, however, they were not able to reach a consensus and this is of course due to the very wording that was there. So they had a bit of a halt on the session. We were there waiting for a while to see if they would actually sign the communiqué, however, that did not take place. So they have agreed to, at this time, make a statement; to record a statement. Of course as Chair of SICA, Minister Sedi Elrington was very instrumental in terms of working out the compromise as to what the wording of the statement would be. So we are hoping that we will be able to get a bit of that tonight so that we can bring that you tomorrow morning. And speaking of which, we will have continued coverage over the next two days. Tomorrow the foreign ministers meet and on Wednesday is actually the forty-ninth Summit of the Heads of State of Government of SICA. So we have several heads of state coming in for that particular meeting on Wednesday. So we will be here to bring you all the behind the scenes as to what is taking place. Tomorrow morning we’ll have our live broadcast on Open Your Eyes and we will be joined by the Foreign Ministers of Belize and Taiwan and we will also be joined by representatives of SICA. So that’s what we have lined up for you tomorrow. The following day, we will also be here live and we also want to let you know that we will be broadcasting live the opening ceremony of the summit itself and the signing of the agreement in the afternoon. We’ll give you the full details of those times a bit later in this newscast. So that’s it for me. Signing off from the Belize Ocean Club in Placencia, I’m Marleni Cuellar reporting for News Five.”
An update to that report is that at this time, the SICA-member countries have proceeded to sign an agreement with Taiwan. But there is a caveat on the peace initiative for the East Seas. We’ll have more on the Taiwan’s meeting on Open Your Eyes on Tuesday morning live from Placencia from where we will also be broadcasting throughout the SICA Summit.
