“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s working visit to Washington on 13 May, during which he will be received by U.S. President Donald Trump, will be extremely significant”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday.

In reply to a question from the press, Mr. Szijjártó reported on the fact that the official invitation was received on Wednesday and has already been confirmed. He told reporters that the main topics of discussion at the meeting will be regional security and the region’s energy supply, as well as bilateral relations, including defence cooperation.

“The Hungarians regard the United States as a strategic ally”, he declared. “We have a similar view to the current administration on many important issues that represent a dilemma for the world. We have a similar way of thinking concerning migration, the protection of Christians and security”, he stressed. “In addition, the United States is Hungary’s most important export market outside the European Union”, he added. Mr. Szijjártó was also asked with relation to news reports according to which the EU essentially ignored the veto submitted by Hungary at the last moment and put forward a kind of joint standpoint on Israel at Monday’s meeting of the UN Security Council despite of it.

With relation to this, The Hungarian Foreign Minister emphasised that a fair and balanced standpoint is required with relation to Israel, and Hungary cannot contribute to the adoption of any document that does not help solve the Middle East crisis, but further exacerbates the problems, and every single word has its significance in this issue. As he explained, the text of the document was continuously changing, and at the end it transpired that certain amendment proposals had not been included, as a result of which Hungary did not authorise the joint standpoint. According to Mr. Szijjártó, the Finnish UN Ambassador reading the document acted partly correctly, when at the beginning of his speech he mentioned that this is just a statement by twenty-seven countries and not the community’s standpoint, but later spoke in the name of the EU, which was a mistake and unacceptable.

(MTI)