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US Ambassador on Belize Guatemala Relations
posted (May 12, 2016)
And back now to the Belize Guatemala territorial dispute. As we've reported, the US Ambassador to the OAS participated in meetings between Belize and Guatemala at the OAS last week. As the regional superpower and one of the Group of Friends, we'd guess that the US is more than just an interested observer. Today we asked the US Ambassador to Belize about his thoughts on the current Belize Guatemala Situation. Here's what he told us.

Carlos Moreno, US Ambassador to Belize
"Our position is and has been that the dispute after so many years since it's not been resolved, that the best and maybe the only course of action at this point is to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice. We sincerely regret the incident that happened a couple weeks ago in the Chiquibul forest. There is always two sides to any story. We fully support the OAS conducting a full investigation and if they request support from the United States in terms of a forensics expert or a scene reconstruction - something like that, I think we are also willing to offer whatever services we can if asked."

Emanuel Pech
"Are you worried or are you concern that the situation might just escalate seeing that it has been for the last couple of months?"

Carlos Moreno, US Ambassador to Belize
"I think I am very concerned and we monitor the situation closely every day to the extent to what we can, we have our military commander speak with both General Jones and the Guatemalan General, just try to maintain open lines of communications, since the US has provided aid to both militaries."

Ambassador Carlos Moreno says they remain committed to assisting in the investigation into the death of the Guatemalan minor.

And while you might wonder why Guatemalan military aggression has been ramped up so much in the past few weeks, there could be any number of reasons, but one of them may well be that Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales really needs a distraction right about now. Yesterday, almost half of his country was paralyzed by thousands of peasants and indigenous people who blocked roads across Guatemala. It is a form of protest to demand that the government nationalize electricity, stop subsidizing big agribusinesses, and set aside 15 percent of cultivable land lots for basic food production.

Protesters also want the conservative administration of President Jimmy Morales to forbid companies from diverting rivers and other sources of water for profit.

They blocked more than 30 important roads for almost nine hours.

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