Poland's foreign minister has been ridiculed on social media for claiming he had had a meeting with a representative from a country that does not exist.

Witold Waszczykowski told reporters in New York he had met with officials from some Caribbean nations including "Belize or San Escobar”.

But San Escobar does not exist.

Mr Waszczykowski, who was in New York to lobby for a Polish seat on the UN Security council from 2018-19, later explained that it was just a slip of the tongue, made while he was tired.

He had had Saint Kitts and Nevis, a two-island Caribbean country known in Spanish as San Cristobal y Nieves, in mind when he made the blunder, he said.

“Unfortunately after 22 hours in planes and several connecting flights you can make a slip of the tongue,” Mr Waszczykowski said.

Yet jokes under the hashtag #SanEscobar erupted online anyway, including an invented flag and a slew of fake news about the fictional place.

A Facebook page hosted pictures of a large monument that –the creators claimed – was being built to honour the Polish foreign minister's contribution to bilateral relations between the two countries.

One tweet said that San Escobar “fully supports Poland's candidacy to the Security Council.”

A Twitter account created for the invented country featured advertisements of the imaginary state’s sandy beaches and even a climate data chart, to better inform potential tourists of when the best time to visit was.

The fictitious account reacted to British reporting of the social media joke by summoning a non-existent ambassador to its pretend foreign affairs department.

Another account, named the San Escobar Times, has been tweeting fake news relating to the pretend country, claiming that Polish footballers had been transferred to the fictional country's team.