Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when he last discussed with his Nigerian counterpart the recent abduction of schoolgirls in that country; and when he next intends to raise this issue.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) spoke to Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs on 18 April about the case. The Foreign Secretary expressed the UK's sympathies about this outrageous crime and offered UK assistance to Nigerian efforts to recover the girls.

Officials at our High Commission in Abuja have met their Nigerian security and military counterparts regularly since the abductions and have repeated the Foreign Secretary's offer of assistance.