“It has transpired that progress in the Middle East peace process is extremely difficult”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI from Warsaw, where he is attending an international conference on the situation in the Middle East.

“At the conference, it became clear that conflicts in Europe’s vicinity, and primarily in the Middle East, that represent a major security challenge to the whole continent, including to the Central European region, remain unsolved”, Mr. Szijjártó said.

Events in Syria “are still not pointing in the direction of a solution”, and events in Yemen “also harbour new challenges for Europe”, he added.

“Although in a geographical sense the distance between the conflict ones and Europe could be called significant, the experiences of recent years have clearly shown: Whatever happened in the Middle East has an immediate and extremely serious security effect on Europe, including on Central Europe”, Mr. Szijjártó said.

“There are 30-35 million people living in the middle East who could decide to set out for Europe at any moment”, he pointed out.

“They have either been living as internal refugees for year, or require daily humanitarian aid, or are already on the road from their own countries in the hope of a better life”, the Minister said.

“We have an interest in the initiatives aimed at solving the conflict in the Middle East coming to a successful close at the earliest opportunity, as that could significantly reduce the migration pressure on Europe”. Mr. Szijjártó stated.

“We must calculate with the fact that until these conflicts remain unsolved, migration pressure will also not be reduced”, he stressed.

“Since this pressure is usually expressed in the form of migration pressure in the Western Balkans, our security and border security measures must be maintained as firmly as possible”, the Minister added.

Mr. Szijjártó said the most important topic oat the conference was Israel and a possible two-state solution. In his speech at the plenary session, he rejected strict measures that “although sound good in international life, but do not bring us any loser to any kind of solution, and are able to generate conflicts, however”.

Accordingly, Hungary does not support sanctions of an economic or commercial nature against Israel”, he said. “Hungary has indeed not applied such measures, ever though the European Commission issued recommendations of this nature”, he pointed out.

In his speech at the conference, Mr. Szijjártó made it clear that the countries of Central Europe expect the UN and its institutions to apply a fair and balanced approach with respect to Israel.

“The countries of the Visegrád Group (V4) are frontrunners in this, and a Prime Ministerial summit of the V4 countries and the head of government of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be held next week”, he added.

Referring to the Palestine-Israel settlement plan presented by U.S. Presidential advisor Jared Kushner, Mr. Szijjártó expressed his hope that the American efforts will be successful.

“Hungary greatly appreciates the American mediation attempts, and all initiatives that take us closer to a solution”, he added.

(MTI)