Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Written Evidence


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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