Last week Thursday, we told you about how 4 former Foreign Affairs Ministers from the PUP challenged the Guatemalan Foreign Minister and said that he was misleading the nation. That's because on last week Monday, 7 days ago, CARLOS RAUL MORALES said in a press conference that the reason that the Guatemalan Government objected to the construction of the Coast Guard's Forward Operating Base was because an agreement was signed in the Confidence Building Measures that neither country would construct military bases at the border.
In our coverage of that story, we told you that Assad Shoman was the only Foreign Minister from the PUP who had not thrown his voice in with the other 4. His absence was notable because he was the lead negotiator on the Guatemalan issue for a long time, and he was a co-framer of the Confidence Building Measures.
Well we contacted us today to explain that the reason he did not join the signing of the press release from the other PUP Foreign Ministers was that he did not see the invitation to join the signing via email until it was too late.
He said that there were actually 3 agreements in the period between 1998 and 2008 that make up apart of the signed Confidence Building Measures.
These are the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures between Belize and Guatemala (November 8, 2000); Agreement to Establish a Transition Process and Confidence Building Measures Between Belize and Guatemala (February 7, 2003), and Agreement on a Framework for Negotiations and Confidence-Building Measures (September 7, 2005), all of which Shoman signed on behalf of Belize.
Shoman notes that none of these agreements in any way sought to restrict Belize from erecting military bases at the border. And so he too says the information from the Guatemalan Foreign Minister is misleading. He notes for good measure that there was no document signed between August 1998 and February 2008 in which Belize agreed not to increase military bases.
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