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It was an emergency meeting to discuss the confrontation between the Guatemalan military and the BDF, which happened last weekend at Belize's Forward Operating Base on the Sarstoon River. Elrington opened today by saying that there were actually three meetings:

Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"We had 3 meetings essentially in Washington; we had the meeting with the Secretary General of the Organization of American States and then we had a meeting with the group of friends, the people who help to finance the OAS office and then we had a meeting with the United States State Department. We like to think that the meetings went quite well. We appeared as national team. The team consisted of myself, Ambassador Shoman, Alexis Rosado, Pat Andrews, our ambassador in Washington and that comprised the team."

"With respect to the meeting with the Secretary General, the Belize delegation expressed our mandate which was firmly to request the extension of the confidence building measures from where it is now stuck at the western border all the way to cover the Sarstoon. That was the instructions we got from Belmopan to discuss at that meeting. The Guatemalans took the position that they did not have the mandate to discuss that issue. They has apprised of that before we arrive there. But we could not continence going there without in fact dealing with that matter. In fact that was the most pressing matter for us. So notwithstanding their reticence, we impressed upon the Secretary General the importance and urgency of the continuation of the confidence building measures to ensure the secure and safety of our people and most importantly to ensure that our defence force would be able to go in and out of the Sartsoon to service our military installation there without any hindrance, That was our very firmed position."

"The other vital important issue was the funding to keep the OAS office open at the adjacency zone. The secretary general explained that the OAS was having serious financial problems, because some of the major donors were not in fact paying their contributions on a timely manner if at all. That office cost some 2.5 million US dollars annually to be kept open. So it's about 5 million dollars our friends spend just to keep the office open."

"We went on to meet the group of friends. The group of friends are the other countries in the world who have historically and traditionally helped us to finance the office at the adjacency zone. They said that in essence that their citizens cannot continue to pay - their tax payers cannot continue to pay money to keep the adjacency office open, if in fact we are not making any progress to getting this matter solved. They want to see tangible progress. We were happy to indicate to them that we certainly here in Belize will be taking initiatives which hopefully will result in very tangible progress being evidence in a relatively short time."

Elrington went on to say that the third meeting that they had was with the US State Department, whose representative were reportedly happy to be able to assist in any way they possible can.