Regarding a meeting of European Union foreign ministers scheduled on occasion of the General Assembly, the foreign minister said that in all likelihood his colleagues would “warn everyone against meeting and talking to representatives of the Russian government”. “I think that’s going in the wrong direction,” he said. “The UN was founded so that even warring parties could at least talk to each other, because that raises the hope of a solution taking shape, or at least things not getting worse,” he said. The UNGA, to be attended by Ukraine, Russia and “everyone else”, “would be an opportunity for everyone to talk to each other on neutral territory,” he said.
Szijjártó said he was scheduled to meet his Russian counterpart in the second half of the week, “and I think that the best course of action would be if as many of my Western colleagues as possible would do the same.”
Meanwhile, the minister welcomed a meeting of the Visegrád Group on closer cooperation. “Our views on and approach to peace are clearly different, but there is a multitude of other matters we agree on, on which cooperation is in the nation’s interest.”