Chris Ruane (PPS (Rt Hon Peter Hain, Secretary of State), Office of the Secretary of State for Wales, Vale of Clwyd, Labour) Hansard source
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what help and assistance her Department has given to the Belize Government in their border dispute with Guatemala.
Ian McCartney (Minister of State (Trade & Investment), Foreign & Commonwealth Office) Hansard source
Belize and Guatemala signed an "Agreement on Framework for Negotiations and Confidence Building Measures" in relation to their territorial dispute on September 2005. Regular negotiations, facilitated by the Organisation of the American States (OAS), have been taking place and are currently focussing on maritime issues.
The UK is strongly supportive of this OAS-facilitated process and since 2002 has spent over£3.5 million from the Government's Global Conflict Prevention Pool to fund associated confidence building measures. We have supported a variety of projects including: the OAS office in the adjacency, or border, zone which promotes interchange, verifies any cross border incidents and diffuses tensions; a language exchange project bringing together Ministers, officials and civil society from both sides; and a project improving commercial linkages which has resulted in a partial scope free trade agreement. We very much hope that negotiations, supported by these confidence building measures, will allow both sides to resolve this dispute.
We have also provided some bilateral support to Belize on this issue through the Bilateral Programme Fund disbursed by our High Commission in Belmopan.
