At the top of the news, we showed you the press conference with Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington, which finished around 6:00. He was discussing the meetings that the Belize Delegation had with The OAS and Guatemala, the Group of Friendly Nations, and the US State Department.
You heard him say that it costs several million dollars to keep the Adjacency Zone office open. The Group of Friends are concerned that so much money, which are taxpayers' dollars from their countries, have been invested for 8 years now, and still, no ICJ resolution has happened. Well, Elrington went on to explain that he and the Guatemalan Foreign Minister have started a campaign to raise those funds. He said that it started just last night when the outgoing Taiwanese President was in Belize:
Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"One of our major donors to the OAS would have been China, but we can't approach them because we are not diplomatically tied to them. So both the foreign minister of Guatemala and myself agreed that we would approach the government of Taiwan. I can say to the nation that in fact last night we delivered a note of request to the foreign minister of Taiwan who happily was in our country. In a private discussion which I had with him, he has assured me that they will do all in their power to be helpful in this difficult time. Historically, they have been successful when they give us the assurance that they will do all in their power to be helpful to us. So we are expecting great things but we are not relying on that. The foreign minister of Guatemala and myself have to travel to other countries, friendly countries; the United Kingdom, the European Union and others to see to what extent we could get in the funding to keep the OAS office open."
We'll look deeper into the hour long press conference in tomorrow's news.
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