Quinto, a businessman and a
People's United Party supporter, by the early 1980s had long been acquainted with
Said Musa, who was a legal consultant for his company. He began lobbying then-
Prime Minister George Price for Belize to establish
relations with Taiwan in those years. Then-ROC ambassador to Guatemala
Gene Loh came to Belize in May 1984 and met with Quinto and Price to discuss the possibility of establishing relations, but Guatemalan leader
Rodolfo Lobos Zamora objected, and after
Manuel Esquivel of the opposing
United Democratic Party of Belize took power in
election late that year, the plans were put aside. In the coming years, Quinto would put up the funds for Musa (by then Minister of Education), Minister of Foreign Affairs
Harry Courtney, and Vice Minister
Robert Leslie to go to
Japan and
Hong Kong in order to meet with Loh again. However, it would not be until after the
1989 election when the PUP regained power, that Belize and the ROC established relations. At that point, Belize only had three overseas missions, in London, Washington DC, and at the United Nations in New York City; Musa, who by then had become Minister of Foreign Affairs, told Quinto that if he did not go to Taipei to fill the position of ambassador, there would be no one else to take the job, and thus he went. His tenure of seventeen years, six months in Taipei made him the "dean" of the
diplomatic corps there. In 2008, at the age of 71 and with the fall from power of his ally Musa in the
election that year, he decided it was time to retire and return to Belize. ==Personal life==