Hungarian foreign minister: those speaking about peace are not spies, Trojan horses

Hungary and China agree on the need to multiply diplomatic efforts aimed at establishing peace, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in New York on Tuesday after a phone call with Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, adding that the UN had a special responsibility in this. Attacks by pro-war European politicians will give further encouragement to the Hungarian government to continue its peace mission because Hungary wants peace instead of war and only peace can make Europe great again, Szijjártó said in New York.

The UN cannot hide

“The UN must finally speak out and finally take on a role,” Szijjártó said, according to a ministry statement. “The UN cannot hide in the comfortable offices in New York, but must take a stand for reopening diplomatic communication channels.”

He noted that the UN had been established to allow for dialogue between those locked in conflict.

Szijjártó said the Hungarian government had recently “come under attack” from “all of Europe’s pro-war politicians”, but this “won’t deter us from continuing the peace mission”.

Mr Szijjártó on phone with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi:

He said the liberal mainstream was “pushing pro-war propaganda in the transatlantic bubble so hard”, that it gave people in Europe and America the impression that “this is the opinion of the whole world, when it is not”.

Majority wants peace

“The global majority wants peace and doesn’t at all understand why Europe doesn’t have a peace strategy . why it’s copying the American strategy,” Szijjártó said. “And the global majority is watching the efforts of the Hungarian peace mission with great sympathy, interest and appreciation.”

Szijjártó said he will meet his Russian counterpart, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations and the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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“This war going on in Ukraine has caused an enormous humanitarian disaster; we Hungarians can see that as well,” he said. “We’ve welcomed more than a million refugees, we see the separated families, we see the forced, unacceptable conscription operations that violate all human rights.”

Szijjártó warned against the danger of “the Western world ignoring the risk of escalation” when making decisions on weapons deliveries.

Meanwhile, the minister said he is also scheduled to hold talks on Tuesday with executives of American companies such as Kyndryl and Johnson and Johnson on potentially bolstering their presence in Hungary.

New scholarships

He said he will also hold talks with his Bahraini, Iranian and Cape Verdean counterparts.

He said Hungary and Bahrain will finalise an investment protection agreement, and said it was “good news” that a Hungarian company had provided the opportunity for cashless payment at the last Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix.

Meanwhile, Hungary and Cape Verde will sign an agreement on Hungary continuing to offer scholarships to 20 university students from Cape Verde each year, he said. Also, Hungarian companies will carry out investments with a view to improving the water supply as part of a 42 million euro tied-aid scheme, he added.

Szijjártó said he will also meet his Iranian counterpart and tell him that Hungary’s interests lay in the swiftest possible resolution to the Middle East crisis.

Szijjártó: Political attacks only give further encouragement to government’s continued peace mission

Attacks by pro-war European politicians will give further encouragement to the Hungarian government to continue its peace mission because Hungary wants peace instead of war and only peace can make Europe great again, Szijjártó said in New York.

The ministry cited Szijjártó as telling an open debate at the UN Security Council that Hungary had been living in the shadow of war for two and a half years and had been confronted with the direct consequences of the war, receiving more than one million refugees, facing war inflation and having to pay tremendously high energy prices.

“The war looks totally different from the neighbourhod compared to an ocean away,” he said.

Thousands of people were dying, a country was under destruction and there were long-term risks, such as the world being divided into blocs again, he said. Hungary knows that when there’s no chance for civilised cooperation between East and West “we lose on it”, he added.

He said that over the past ten years he had participated in a number of meetings in the EU where they discussed the issue of armed conflicts and wars far away from Europe, and the European position had always been to urge the parties of the given war to give up the battlefield solution, to sit around the negotiating table and look for a diplomatic solution.

Speakers about peade are not spies or Trojan horses

Now when there’s a war going on in Europe, not only is the position totally different but if someone uses the word “peace” and the word “negotiation” they get stigmatised immediately, being called a “spy or Trojan horse”, he said.

Szijjártó said it was “a very bad approach” that the legitimacy of diplomacy had been debated. He said diplomacy was not only talking to those “with whom you agree 100 percent”.

Diplomacy, he said, was about talking to everyone, even to those with whom one did not agree on major issues.

The last two and a half years had proven clearly that there was no battlefield solution to the war in Ukraine, so it was necessary to give back the legitimacy for diplomacy, the minister said.

“It is not only unacceptable but scandalous that a country is being stigmatised in the 21st century just because of arguing in favour of a diplomatic solution, just because of using channels of communication to talk to those with whom there might be a lack of common understanding on major issues,” he said.

Over-politisation of the UN is “unacceptable”

The UN has been established to give a platform for those who do not agree with each other, who are in a hostile relationship, who are at war with each other, to talk to each other, he added.

Szijjártó said the over-politisation of the UN was “unacceptable” and it was equally unacceptable to restrict countries from negotiating with whomever they want.

Attacks by European politicians representing a pro-war position, he said, would only give the Hungarian government further encouragement to continue its peace mission.

“We want peace instead of war. And only peace will make Europe great again,” he added.

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