Emergency meeting called in Guat. dispute

The situation on the Belize Guatemala border is heating up and to help cool things off a ministerial level meeting between the two countries has been scheduled for mid-month in Miami. The immediate problem stems from Belize’s decision to evict illegal Guatemalan farmers from two settlements they have established more than a kilometre within Belizean territory. That distance is significant because under the agreement signed on November eighth in Washington, Belize and Guatemala have the right to act unilaterally to deal with any illegal settlements more than one kilometre on either side of the border. Despite Belize’s insistence that the settlements at Machaquila in Toledo and Rio Blanco in Cayo are both outside that protected zone, Belmopan has agreed to suspend any evictions until after the Miami meeting on January sixteenth. The order for the Guatemalans to leave Machaquila was due to be issued today at three p.m., but has now been cancelled. No order had been given with regard to Rio Blanco, but the two facilitators in the negotiations were told that they had until January fifteenth to determine the exact location of that settlement. It appears that those facilitators, Sir Shridath Ramphal and Paul Reichler, prefer to look more deeply into the situation and have written the two governments asking for the high level meeting to work out a more effective mechanism for dealing with the situation at the border. The encounter in Miami will include an OAS representative, the two facilitators, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Gabriel Orellana and presumably Ambassador Assad Shoman, who has been blessed with ministerial rank for the purpose of leading Belize’s negotiating efforts. While the Belize government release confirmed the country’s attendance at the meeting, we could not find out conclusively whether Guatemala had also agreed.