UN must restore dialogue for global peace, Hungary’s Szijjártó urges at General Assembly

Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said in New York on Monday that the country is doing all it can to ensure a return to peace amid fair international cooperation, and the UN should also play a big role in this.

Addressing the UN General Assembly’s summit on the future, Szijjártó said the global security situation was at a post-WW2 nadir, with growing terrorism, migration and multiple armed conflicts taking place worldwide.

He called for “mutual respect” to be restored to world politics through dialogue.

Positions that diverged from the mainstream and stood up for national interests were stigmatised and attacked, he said.

He said European politicians liked to talk about reaching a peaceful settlement via diplomacy, but when “war is raging on the continent,” they “attack and criticize anyone who stands up for peace.”

The possible outcomes were a third world war or the world falling into blocks again, he added.

He said that rather than accepting the prevailing opposition between East and West, Hungary is interested in connectivity and a return to fair international cooperation.

He said the UN had not been established “as a club of like-minded countries” but as a forum for “everyone to negotiate about everything.”

“The UN must take up this role once more. My question is: where can we talk about peace if not here?”

“That’s why we won’t accept any constraints on whom we can meet, whom we can’t meet or what topics we can and can’t discuss,” he added.

“We Hungarians are a peace-loving nation in central Europe. What I can promise is that we Hungarians will do everything to ensure that … the future is an period of peace, where international cooperation is fair … and ‘peace’ is not a swearword, and where no one is stigmatised for standing up for peace,”

Szijjártó said.