Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the prospects for initiating a dialogue between the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea on normalising relations between those two countries; and what steps he is taking to support the initiation of such a dialogue.

I welcome the offer of dialogue with Eritrea made by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy in his 2 April inaugural speech, which will be necessary to end the tensions between those two countries.