New foreign minister sets Guat. claim as 1st priority

And while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs strengthens ties with Cuba, newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs Eamon Courtenay says that while Belize will continue to enhance its relations with the United States and the Republic of China on Taiwan, number one priority remains the settlement of the Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory.

Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade
?The negotiations as you know are scheduled to continue later this month in Roàtan in Honduras on the maritime issue. This is a matter the whole Belize, Guatemala issue is a matter of fundamental issue to us so we want a continued assistance from the United Kingdom, the United States, and our other allies on that issue. Certainly the Republic of China is another country that provides a tremendous amount of support for us. We are very happy with the relations that we have with them, and we will continue to strengthen and deepen those relations. Beyond that I want to emphasize our relationship with CariCom, especially in the area of trade. We have a number of things that we are negotiating right now, for example, sugar, bananas and the whole new relationship characterized by what is called an economic partnership agreement between CariCom and the European Union that is going to define our economic and indeed our development relations with the European Union. Let me just say this, in that scenario there are some challenges and I think that we have to say to the Europeans that this entire relationship has to be development oriented. It is not an agreement between two equal trading blocks, therefore there has to be some asymmetry.?