Fonseca Explains Ambassador Shuffling

Last week, Prime Minister John Briceño announced the appointment of eleven new ambassadors and diplomatic staff. While some familiar faces are staying put, others are heading off to represent Belize in new countries, and a few fresh names are joining the foreign service. We caught up with Foreign Affairs Minister Francis Fonseca, who shared what’s behind the changes and what the government hopes to achieve with this new lineup.

 

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Foreign Affairs

“As you reported  we’ve kept a few ambassadors. And those that we change, it’s not a reflection of, them not doing their job competently or effectively. It’s just that we think, and certainly I think, and the Prime Minister shared shares that view that when it comes to the foreign service we need to try to inject new blood into the diplomatic relations. In the case of the Washington, in the case of us, the US Ambassador, Lester Mendez, we wanted the outgoing ambassador to come to Belize. The focus on a particular project to help us with the port. And we felt that Mr. Menez, who had just stepped down from the OAS, who had completed his term of office as  assistant Secretary General of the OES, that, he was in Washington. He had a lot of good contacts, a lot of good connections. He understood how Washington works. We thought he would be a very effective ambassador. And of course he’s served there in Washington before. In the case of Taiwan, we are very grateful for the work that outgoing Ambassador Candice Pitts did.  But we had an opportunity to bring in Katherine Meighan,  again, there we felt this was somebody who we think could drive Belize’s trade and investment. Agenda In terms of Taiwan, we believe there are great opportunities for expanding trade and investment with Taiwan. She is she lives in Taiwan. She studied in Taiwan. I think we felt that those were the right moves to make.”