London - British officials are denying reports that the Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, and the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, are split over whether to grant full citizenship to 160,000 inhabitants of Britain's former colonies, now known as dependent territories.
People on the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar already have British passports, but similar rights do not exist for the 160,000 inhabitants in territories such as Anguilla, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Pitcairn Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, St Helena and the Turks and Caicos Islands.