Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what representations the Government has made to the governments of Guyana and Venezuela on the border dispute between those countries.

​The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my noble Friend, the Rt Hon. Baroness Anelay of St Johns met both the President and Foreign Minister of Guyana in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September. At those meetings she made clear that the British Government's position on the border controversy between Venezuela and Guyana has not changed. The Minister reaffirmed our belief that the 1899 Arbitral Award, to which we were a party, definitively settled the border but that this is a bilateral issue to be resolved between the two countries. The Minister also highlighted that both countries are signatories to the Geneva Agreement of 1966 which provides a range of mechanisms for dealing with this issue. The British High Commissioner in Guyana has also discussed the border controversy on several occasions with the Government of Guyana as have officials from our Embassy in Venezuela with Venezuelan officials.