"We will not send weapons; neither will weapons be allowed through Hungarian territory on the way to Ukraine; and a no-fly zone is off the table," Orbán said, adding that "This is good news for Hungary."Continue reading
NATO’s foreign ministers discussed the organisation’s new strategic concept on the first day of a meeting in Brussels, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook late on Wednesday.
The meeting was held in preparation for an upcoming NATO summit in Madrid, where the strategy could be adopted and “set strategic directions for NATO’s policy in the coming years and decades”, Szijjártó said.
Participants in the meeting agreed that the Ukraine war fundamentally changed NATO’s focus, Szijjártó said. He regretted that “the relationship between NATO and Russia has never been this bad and it calls for redefining”. Participants agreed that cutting all communication with Russia would be “the greatest disaster” and that “some ties need to be maintained”, Szijjártó said.
Szijjártó said he had informed his counterparts about the security challenge along Hungary’s southern borders, with regard to 130,000 attempts for illegal entry last year, and said that in future even greater waves of migration could be expected from Africa.
He also warned of a possible food crisis arising from the fact that Russia and Ukraine accounted for 15 percent of all grain exports, which could also increase migratory trends. “This also offers an opportunity for terrorists and activists to hide among the migrants,” he said.
The discussion in the meeting touched upon China, Szijjártó said, adding that “the topic should be handled calmly because cooperation with China offers a lot of opportunities”. He also added he had been approached by western companies active in Hungary to convince Chinese suppliers to start production in Hungary.
Featured photo by Tibor Rosta/MTI