Today, the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations (APAMO), released a statement condemning the attempt by the Guatemalan military to stop the SATIIM rangers from entering the Sarstoon River.
APAMO says quote, "With the increasing sensitivity of the bi-national relations between Belize and Guatemala, these organizations operating in protected areas near the border need the support of the relevant Government agencies to ensure the deterrence of the ongoing pillaging of our natural resources by non-Belizeans." End Quote.
Given the recent confrontations between Belizeans and the Guatemalan military in the Sarstoon river, some suspect that all this aggression is an attempt to establish that the Guatemalans have and will continue to exercise their sovereignty over the river. The Prime Minister told the press that if that is the intent, they Guatemalans will fail if and when the territorial dispute goes to the International Court of Justice:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"I think they have fooled themselves into generally believing or convinced themselves that the Sartsoon is theirs. They are absolutely wrong headed and the weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly against them. But they can't be doing this simply as a kind of ICJ tactic, because that would fail. We, just as much as they continue to assert their sovereignty, we continue to assert ours. There is not going to be any kind of omission, slippage on our part that would allow them to say, well see, in effect Belize kind of defacto conceded that our sovereignty. No, so if that is the thinking, it will get nowhere and these people are far too sophisticated to think or to ever imagine that something like that could work."
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