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SZIJJÁRTÓ: WAR RHETORIC MORE AND MORE VOLUBLE

 

Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, insisted that the rhetoric of war was growing more and more voluble, and he called on the international community to focus on achieving peace rather than making decisions and remarks that risked prolonging or escalating the conflict. “Maybe the situation doesn’t seem that serious an ocean or a few hundred or thousand kilometres away,” the minister said at a news conference in Minsk. “But we Hungarians who live in the war’s neighbourhood are fully aware of the devastating effects of the war.”
Hungarians have already paid a high price for the conflict next door, Szijjártó said, noting that more than a million people have fled Ukraine via Hungary, and everyone felt the effects of “wartime inflation and the European Union’s ill-advised sanctions policy in their own skin”. Hungary and Belarus have both offered to host peace talks between the two sides, Szijjártó said. At the same time, holding the peace talks was more important than where they would take place, he added.
Meanwhile, Szijjártó said he and Aleinik had also discussed bilateral cooperation in areas not affected by sanctions, such as agriculture and the food and pharmaceutical industries. He noted that Hungarian exports to Belarus in the latter two sectors were already significant. They also exchanged road haulage permits, clearing all legal obstacles to the transport of goods between one other’s countries, the minister said.
Szijjártó said that although they had not discussed domestic political matters, he had underscored the importance of guaranteeing minority rights and religious freedom. He said they had agreed that the Hungarian government will provide more support for the renovation of the Uspensky Cathedral.