Will Government Reinstitute Sarstoon Law?

Dean Barrow

So with Belizean civilians still not able to enter the Sarstoon, what happens next? Will government perhaps seek to reinstitute the Sarstoon Law?

On the Phone: Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Why would I do that? That S.I. was to serve the limited purpose of ensuring that at the time the circumstances that saw us fear that we would not be able to protect the lives and limbs of the people who wanted to go to the Sarstoon at the time the SI was passed – the purpose was to prevent any difficulty there and expressly to give diplomacy a chance to work. Well, we’ve had several meetings. We’ve had most importantly the meeting in Washington that the O.A.S. Secretary-General was a part of and the meeting in Istanbul. There is in my view and can be absolutely no longer any reason for being for that S.I.  We insist now that especially because both with respect to the Washington meeting and the Istanbul meeting there was the kind of progress that saw a commitment on the part of Guatemala to negotiate a formal protocol. In the meantime it has to be that normalcy will prevail and normalcy must mean that the traditional exercise of our freedom of movement along the Sarstoon is what is now obtained.”