Hungary is ready to take on a larger role in NATO missions, the foreign minister has announced.
Péter Szijjártó, minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, made the remarks following talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on Thursday.
Minister Szijjártó said that the government would soon start negotiations concerning the future role of 77 Hungarian troops that have recently returned from the United Nations’ Cyprus mission. The government and NATO will set up a joint team to assess which international mission needs further personnel, he added.
On another matter, the minister added that the situation in Ukraine has “worsened considerably” since the Ukrainian government has “done nothing” to change the country’s education law, while the Ukrainian parliament passed a language law that “strips national minorities of the right to use their own mother tongue”.
Minister Szijjártó called it “unacceptable” if Ukraine “compiles lists of people holding citizenship of a NATO country and subjects them to secret service investigations”.
The minister said that moves taken against the Hungarian minority by a country striving for closer cooperation with NATO are similarly unacceptable.