Local News

Reports in the Guatemalan press say that a meeting between Prime Minister Dean Barrow and the president of Guatemala Otto Perez Molina will take place on October nineteenth.

Prensa Libre reported in its online edition today that the meeting originally scheduled for this weekend at the OAS office in the Adjacency Zone had to be postponed due to scheduling conflicts for the secretary General of the Organization of American States Miguel Insulza. 

When contacted this morning, Prime Minister Barrow told Love News that he was not aware of a meeting scheduled for this weekend with the Guatemalan president.  The Prensa Libre report says that during the meeting, Prime Minister Barrow and President Perez will receive reports from the OAS office in the adjacency zone on recent incursions into Belizean territory by Guatemalan xateros and gold panners. 

The Prensa Libre report also suggests that at the October nineteenth meeting, Prime Minister Barrow and president Otto Perez Molina will discuss preparations for the simultaneous referendum to be conducted in both Belize and Guatemala on October 6, 2013, to decide whether or not to take the centuries old unfounded claim by Guatemala to the International Court of Justice in the Hague for final resolution. 

Although Guatemala formally recognized Belize as an independent state in 1981, it has not abandoned its territorial claim.