Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if the Government will make representations to the UN Secretary-General on using his good offices to (a) work towards a permanent solution to the land dispute between Guyana and Venezuela and (b) find a mutually agreeable juridical settlement of that dispute.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, through our Mission to the United Nations in New York, has previously raised the border controversy between Guyana and Venezuela with the UN Secretary-General's office. We did so to seek current UN thinking on next steps and to express our support for the Secretary-General's ongoing efforts. We have been clear that the British Government believes the 1899 Arbitral Award, to which we were a party, definitively settled the border. This is a bilateral issue to be resolved between both countries. We look forward to a successful resolution of the matter.