“It is untenable that the fight against terrorism is not part of the United Nations’ budget, while the global organisation is wasting its money on causes that pose a danger to the entire world, such as facilitating migration”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared in Vienna on Tuesday during his speech at a counter-terrorism conference.

“The continuous facilitation of migration and its portrayal as one of the world’s most positive phenomena is posing a very serious threat to all of humanity”, he added. “The UN Global Compact for Migration is an encouragement to people to set out from home, and represents a huge danger to the regions and countries through which and to where migration will be aimed, and it already aimed at”, he explained. “For this reason, we call on the United Nations to include the fight against terrorism in its budget, and to spend more on the global fight against terrorism and less on facilitating migration, because this is what serves the world’s interests”, the Minister said at the conference (the Joint Regional High-level Conference on “Foreign Terrorist Fighters – Addressing Current Challenges”), which was jointly organised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Switzerland, and which is the summary of several regional meetings held by OSCE member countries.

“The idyllic state of affairs in which there was no major risk of terrorism on the European continent came to an end 4-5 years ago with the headway made by the Islamic State terrorist organisation (ISIS) in the Middle East and North Africa, and with the increase in mass illegal migration. Following 2015, parallel to the increase in mass illegal migration, we had to endure over 30 major terrorist attacks in Europe that were committed by people with migrant backgrounds”, Mr. Szijjártó pointed out.

“Europe must be given back its security, and the continent must be protected from global terrorism. This requires four steps: ISIS must be permanently defeated, the borders must be protected, communities that have fled from the terror must be given assistance to enable them to return home, and the fight against terrorism must be made into one of the main duties of the United Nations”, he underlined.

“Accordingly, the tasks are as follows: we must prevent the Islamic State from sending back the foreign fighters who joined its ranks in the Middle East and North Africa so that these people can act as ‘lone wolves or sleeper cells’ and carry out attacks here”, he explained. “There are still thousands of European Union citizens in the aforementioned regions”, he pointed out.

“This requires that we protect our borders and put a stop to illegal and uncontrolled migration, just as Hungary is doing”, he stated. “Hungary has spent over one billion euros on border protection in recent years, but security is paramount. Because the greater the numbers involved in migration, the greater the chance for terrorist organisations to spread its people and extremist ideology around the world”, Mr. Szijjártó underlined.

(MTI)