Belize, Peru Sign Cooperation Agreement
Fresh off the recent Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru, Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington and Peruvian Ambassador to Belize Jorge Roman Morey, based in El Salvador, signed a special friendship and cooperation agreement at the Belize City office of the ministry, the Edward Laing building. Ambassador Morey is in his final days in the post. The South American state is offering various levels of bilateral cooperation with Belize. Later, the Ambassador made a gift of a set of special indigenous Peruvian musical instruments to the Samuel Haynes Institute of Excellence on Mahogany Street. News Five’s Aaron Humes reports.
Aaron Humes, Reporting
Thousands of miles separate Peru and Belize, but ambassador Jorge Roman Morey says that in this day and age, much more connects us.
Jorge Román Morey
Jorge Román Morey, Ambassador of Peru to Belize
“The boundaries now are physical; they are there. But in the days we are now, there is no such thing. We are only one people. The communication is so fast in this time and it’s now in your hand; you can do it through a phone. So the relations can not necessarily go through this formal process. But we need to speed them [up] to faster get results from what we are going to look for. As I said, first we need to establish which are the focal points and after that, start working the program to learn from each other.”
And that is the point of the new agreement of cooperation and friendship signed between Peru and Belize in Belize City. Ambassador Morey and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington outlined some of the key areas in which the countries will soon be working together.
Jorge Román Morey
“It depends on which strength one country has; it doesn’t mean that Peru has all of the strengths. Because his is a bilateral agreement, that means we too can learn from Belize. For example, let me just say one topic: the way you manage your tourism among the magnificent cultural monuments you have in the city. We do have ours but maybe we can learn how to manage. Or as the Minister [said], we can provide more information on Peru’s gastronomy, just to say some basic things – but of course this goes further than that. The idea is to work in cooperation – agriculture, for example, which is so important for this country. We can share experience in crops, in how to manage water. It is so vast, the fields we can explore.”
Wilfred Elrington
Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“We can have agreement whereby we can send our people who are working, for example, in the hospitality section, tourism, to study in Peru; we can have people from Peru come to assist us in the agricultural sector, or maybe in the tourism sector, in the teaching area. We can get assistance on trade, aid development, grants, the whole gambit of cooperation that exists between countries, some of which are more developed and some of which are less developed.”
And in the case of the Samuel Haynes Institute, that cooperation will lead to sweet music, as the ambassador turned over a set of twenty quenas, the traditional flute of the Andes.
Wilfred Elrington
“This is part of the promise he had made when he first came to help us with some musical instruments and these are really indigenous Peruvian instruments – they’re wonderful, almost similar to the flute, except they are played in a different way. I certainly can’t play them but very once played very well they are exceedingly beautiful.”
Aaron Humes reporting for News Five.
