Hungary to contribute troops to NATO mission in Baltic states

Jurmala, April 22 (MTI) – Hungary has agreed to contribute a company of soldiers to NATO’s mission in the Baltic states in 2017, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday.

Under the agreement, the Visegrad Four (V4) grouping of Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic will rotate their countries’ military presence in the region every three months.

Each country will supply some 150 soldiers, Szijjarto told MTI over the phone from Latvia, where he is attending a meeting of the foreign ministers of the V4, Baltic and Nordic states.

“With this year-long mission, the Visegrad Four countries are clearly demonstrating their solidarity with the Baltic states,” the minister said.

The military staffs of the countries involved will begin laying out the plans for the missions and submit them to their respective defence ministries. The mission’s details must be finalised by the July NATO summit in Warsaw, Szijjarto said.

On the topic of NATO enlargement, Szijjarto said all countries at the meeting were in agreement that the process must continue. He said Hungary’s stance on the matter is that enlargement is crucial for the alliance’s credibility.

He said a failure on NATO’s part to indicate to Georgia and Macedonia that it is ready to discuss their accession could destabilise those countries, which would also hurt Europe’s security.

The minister stressed that Hungary supports the EU offering visa liberalisation to Georgia and Ukraine.

Regarding the EU’s sanctions against Russia, he said views at the meeting on the issue had been “mixed”. There was “a great deal of hypocrisy” surrounding the matter, he insisted. He noted that Europe’s biggest energy companies were working closely together with Russia’s Gazprom on the Nord Stream pipeline while French President Francois Hollande had invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit him in France.

“We need an open and thorough debate” on the sanctions against Russia, Szijjarto said, adding that Hungary in no way supports their automatic extension.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters