Guatemala City – Foreign Minister Jorge Briz announced here Wednesday that he is stepping down from his post with an eye toward seeking elected office.
At a press conference offered together with President Oscar Berger, the foreign minister, who has served in his post since January 2004, said that “in the next few days” he will hand over his portfolio to the successor appointed by the president.
Briz said his resignation was tendered for “personal reasons,” which he would not enumerate, but he added that he planned to pursue unspecified “political activities.”
Berger said that the diplomatic chief’s exit came as a result of “personal decisions,” and he acknowledged that the “electoral political issue is gaining force and there have already been other (Cabinet) ministers who have left to seek to participate” in the 2007 elections.
Sources in the president’s office told EFE that Briz was leaving the Foreign Ministry due to “differences” that had arisen in recent weeks with Berger and Vice President Eduardo Stein.
Briz is the general secretary of the conservative Reform Party, one of the four groups making up the Grand Alliance, the coalition that brought Berger to power in the 2004 elections but maintains its own separate political identity
