But, all the talk of proceeding smoothly to a referendum is kind of wait and see, because the history of this dispute tells us that many things which are supposed to happen, never really do happen. Case in point: the Sarstoon Protocol. Major international meetings were held and over a year later, there's still no protocol. The Ambassador discussed the difficulties with that:
H.E. Alexis Rosado, BZ Ambassador to Guatemala
"Well where we are on that it that we're on a standstill basically. We launched negotiations I think it was last May, in, as you correctly pointed out, we, we went to Istanbul and we said we were going to start negotiations on a mechanism for confidence building with the Sarstoon River. We went to Washington subsequently to start the first table of negotiations, ahm, after the incidents took place. And since then, really, those talks, ahm, were suspended by our neighbor, and since then we've been trying to sit down with them to continue but they still resistant."
Pat Andrews, CEO - Foreign Affairs
"When I was in Washington and I visited with the secretary general of the OAS, we would raise the issue with him too and underline the importance of having this mechanism in place because lacking it we always risk then to have incidents which would be unfortunate, so as Ambassador Rosado has indicated we are going to continue to pursue it."
No word on when or where it will be pursued.
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