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Szijjarto in NY: Resolve Syrian conflict to stop European migrant crisis
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New York, September 29 (MTI) – The European migrant crisis cannot be resolved without putting an end to the conflict in Syria, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers held at the United Nations general assembly in New York on Monday.
Commenting on the meeting, Szijjarto told MTI, “Ever since the much-reported remarks made in Germany welcoming all Syrians, everybody at the border is claiming to be Syrian and they obviously do not have a passport.”
“It was easy to see at the New York meeting that there are still different approaches to the issue of Syria within the EU,” he said, adding that new, innovative methods are needed to resolve the crisis since the old ones do not work.
The Hungarian government agrees with the German chancellor that the Syrian conflict can only be resolved by involving everyone; the EU and the transatlantic community should cooperate more closely with Russia, he said.
The minister told European counterparts that increased efforts are needed to fight Islamic State by way of air strikes and training because the IS is destabilising large areas, forcing more and more people to leave their homes and set off for Europe. He noted that 150 Hungarian soldiers provide training services in Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Szijjarto noted he had signed an agreement with Afghan counterpart Salahuddin Rabbani on cooperation between the two ministries, and this will involve regular bilateral political consultations. Szijjarto noted that Afghanistan is a migrant country of origin and therefore stabilising it is in the interest of Hungary and Europe as a whole.
Hungary was right to allocate half million dollars annually between 2015 and 2017 to train security forces in Afghanistan and training officers will stay in the country in the future, Szijjarto said. Serious thinking is needed at the NATO summit in Warsaw concerning the situation in Afghanistan after 2017, he added. “The worst would be to withdraw forces … allowing everything built with serious efforts and sacrifices over the years to go to ruin.”