Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from the Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
12 May 2003
When I wrote to you on 19 March about this subject[7],
I said we expected to be able to cover El Salvador, Honduras and
Nicaragua from Guatemala City.
Since then, the Nicaraguan Government have told
us that it would rather we reverted to the coverage we operated
prior to opening an Embassy there twelve years ago. That means
instructing the Embassy in Costa Rica to take on the non-resident
responsibility for Nicaragua. We asked our colleagues in the Department
for International Development whether they would have a problem
with coverage instead from Costa Rica: they said they would not
want to go against the wishes of the Nicaraguans.
The purpose of this letter therefore is to advise
the Foreign Affairs Committee that we have decided to accede to
the Nicaraguan request. We shall seek the host government approval
for the Ambassador in San Jose to be accredited additionally to
Nicaragua, and likewise approval for the Ambassador in Guatemala
City to be accredited additionally to El Salvador and Honduras
as planned.
In both Nicaragua and Honduras the DFID offices
will remain.
Rt Hon Jack Straw, MP
Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
May 2003
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