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ORBÁN: SOMEONE MUST MAKE PEACE FOR IT TO HAPPEN

 

Peace will not happen by itself, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio in an interview on Friday. “Peace will come when someone makes it,” he said in connection with the war in Ukraine. Orbán said that Hungary, as the holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, did not have the mandate to negotiate on behalf of the European Union. “This never occurred to me,” he said. He said his task was to demonstrate how the situation has unfolded in respect of how far each party could go, and once this had been revealed the leaders of the 27 EU member states may come to a decision. Henceforth, those authorised to negotiate “will do so”. “But this is still very far off,” the prime minister said. “We can only take the first steps on the road to peace.” Orbán said that Europe should hold the compass of peace and humanity, humane thinking, and pursue a humane foreign policy, and it was likely that it could do more to move towards peace. Commenting on his recent meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Orbán said Hungary knew its place and “the big countries” would handle the big peace negotiations, but in a vacuum of dialogue it was “very hard to imagine how to move in the direction of peace without it”.