IMAGES BY OVOODOCORVO
A ‘peace
mission’ and a likely Trump meeting: how Hungary’s PM became the spoiler of the
Nato summit
Viktor Orbán
enraged most of the alliance by meeting with Putin and Xi, while shunning
Biden, as he seeks to negotiate a Ukraine war settlement
Flora
Garamvolgyi, Andrew Roth in Washington, Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Thu 11 Jul
2024 01.37 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/nato-viktor-orban-peace-mission-trump
If there has
been a spoiler at this week’s carefully curated Nato summit, then it is Viktor
Orbán, the conservative Hungarian prime minister who has enraged his Nato
allies by meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping en route to Washington in
what he has called his “peace mission”.
Now on
Thursday the Hungarian PM is planning to fly to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald
Trump, a source close to Orbán told the Guardian, as he seeks to negotiate a
peace deal without consulting other EU nations or the Biden administration. By
contrast, he has effectively shunned Joe Biden at this week’s Nato summit and
did not request a bilateral meeting with the US president, according to three
sources familiar with the summit preparations.
The
Hungarian PM has been quietly seeking to negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine
war with an eye to a Trump re-election. Trump’s lead in the presidential polls
has been bolstered by Biden’s blundering debate performance and questions about
his mental acuity and age.
Orbán, who
also met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv earlier this month, has sought to
have Ukraine and Russia sit down to direct negotiations, talks that Zelenskiy
has ruled out in the past.
Bloomberg
News late on Thursday evening reported that Ukraine was considering new peace
talks that would include meetings with Russian officials, as well as a
potential meeting between Trump and Orbán in Mar-a-lago where the two would
discuss Orbán’s recent discussions with Putin and Zelenskiy.
And Orbán
could use Hungary’s current control of the European Council presidency to claim
he is negotiating on behalf of other EU nations, according to insiders in
Budapest, Brussels, and both campaigns in Washington, including with a
potential president-elect Trump.
Orbán shared
only a curt handshake with the US president onstage on Wednesday, a day after
meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom he said led “the only
country that has successfully acted as a mediator between the warring parties
in the Russian-Ukrainian war”.
Observers
did not expect that Biden would hold a bilateral meeting with Orbán.
“Biden might
not be interested in elevating Orbán and rewarding him after his performance in
Moscow and Beijing,” said Daniel Hegedüs, a senior fellow at the German
Marshall Fund thinktank. “And for Orbán, who plays the long game, seeking a
meeting with Trump is certainly the most strategic choice than any meeting with
Biden.”
“The real
question of the trip is whether Trump will grant Orbán an audience and whether
[Orbán] will stage the meeting in any way related to Hungary’s ongoing EU
council presidency,” he said.
A person
familiar with Trump’s plans said the former president was scheduled to stay in
Florida until Friday, at which point he would fly to Philadelphia for a rally,
and that there was “no time even hypothetically” to meet with Orbán afterwards.
That left Thursday as the only day that Orbán could fly down to meet with the
Republican candidate.
Trump would
also be wary of Orbán trying to position himself as a power broker in Europe,
the person said. Bloomberg News reported that Trump had not asked Orbán to
negotiate the peace deal for him.
Orbán has
not had an official meeting with Biden for the past four years but met Trump in
March this year at his beachfront compound in Mar-a-Lago. Orbán endorsed him
several times throughout the past eight years and expressed support, calling
him a “man of honor” after Trump was found guilty on 34 counts in a criminal
trial.
During a
Budapest press conference on Monday, Orbán’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyás was
asked whether Trump and Orbán would meet during his visit to the US. “It is
worth meeting people who are interested in peace,” he replied.
Those on his
team have made their support for Trump in the upcoming elections clear. In
Washington, his political director Balázs Orbán took to the stage at the
rightwing National Conservatism conference, while his foreign minister Peter
Szijjarto told Reuters: “We see a chance for peace if President Trump is
winning. We see a chance for good Hungary-US relationships if President Trump
is winning.”
“I think a
very strong external impact must take place in order to make them negotiate at
least,” foreign minister Peter Szijjarto told Reuters on Wednesday. “Who has
the chance for that in the upcoming period? That’s only President Trump if he
is elected.”
Orbán’s
visit to Moscow – only the second by a European leader since Putin’s full-scale
invasion in February 2022 – caused a furor in both Nato and the EU, both of
which Hungary is a member state. In a letter to European Council’s Charles
Michel seen by the Guardian, Orbán expressed a broadly pro-Russian view on the
conflict, saying: “Time is not on the side of Ukraine, but on the side of the
Russian forces.”
He also
argued against the strategic isolation of Russia that has been sought by most
western nations. “The chance for peace is diminished by the fact that
diplomatic channels are blocked and there is no direct dialogue between the
parties who have a leading role to play in creating the conditions for peace,”
he wrote, arguing against the isolation of Russia.
“Political
leadership provided by the United States is limited, due to the ongoing
election campaign … therefore we can expect no such proposal coming from the US
in the coming months,” he wrote.
“I will
continue my talks aimed at clarifying the opportunities for peace next week,”
he added without clarification.
Hungary was
among a small set of countries that opposed an annual funding pledge proposed
by Jens Stoltenberg and opposed including language in the final Nato communique
that Ukraine’s accession to the Nato military alliance would be “irreversible”.
In May, Hungary blocked a €6.6bn ($7.1bn) aid package to Ukraine being prepared
by EU countries as part of the European Peace Facility (EPF) for almost a year.
Hungary was
sharply reprimanded at a meeting of senior EU diplomats on Wednesday, during a
discussion of Orbán’s “peace missions” put on the agenda by Poland, one of
Ukraine’s staunchest allies.
EU
ambassadors from 25 member states – all except Hungary and its close ally
Slovakia – condemned Orbán’s recent visits to Moscow, Beijing and Azerbaijan,
where he took part in a meeting of the Organisation of Turkic States.
Some accused
Budapest of being disrespectful and breaking the EU treaties; others accused
Budapest of seeking to “instrumentalise” its presidency.
“It took
nine days for [the] HU presidency to lose any smidgen of trust they had left,”
said one EU diplomat. “His [Orbán’s] actions are not serving the EU or a peace.
They play into the hands of Putin and his war project. [The] Hungarian slogan
to ‘Make Europe Great Again’ is more about making Russia great again at this
stage.”
A second EU
diplomat said: “It was quite unanimous in the way that the 25 member states
took the floor and strongly criticised Hungary.” The Guardian understands that
no EU ambassador at this meeting mentioned removing the presidency from
Hungary, although the idea was discussed more privately ahead of Budapest’s
six-month stint.
While
academics have argued that the EU can remove the presidency from Hungary, EU
diplomats are divided on the legality of the move and are wary of setting a
precedent. Officials are discussing other ways to register displeasure, such as
sending officials to ministerial meetings, although the first EU diplomat said
it was “too early for details”.
Additional
reporting by Hugo Lowell and Lisa O’Carroll
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