Montenegro and Sánchez will meet on Monday
The Prime Ministers of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, and Spain, Pedro Sánchez are due to meet next week to discuss the situation in Gaza and the recognition of the State of Palestine, the Spanish government announced today (April 9).
“This week, the president of the government will begin a series of trips, meetings and contacts with European leaders to share his concern about the situation in Gaza and the need to push for the recognition of Palestine as a state,” said the Spanish government’s spokeswoman minister, Pilar Alegria, at a press conference in Madrid.
Sánchez will begin these contacts with trips to Norway and Ireland next Friday, followed by a meeting with Luís Montenegro on Monday in Madrid, the minister said.
Then, on Tuesday, Sánchez will travel to Slovenia and meet with his Belgian counterpart, Alexander de Croo, before the start of next week’s informal European Council in Brussels.
“Our objective is clear. It’s to push for the recognition of Palestine as a state,” stressed Pilar Alegria, who emphasised that the conflict in Gaza, which pits Israel against the radical Islamist group Hamas, is “at a key moment” and “being addressed by the United Nations”.
“What we want is to stop the humanitarian disaster in Palestine and contribute to the start as soon as possible of a political peace process that will lead to the materialisation of the two-state solution (Israel and Palestine),” added the spokeswoman for the Spanish government, a left-wing coalition led by the Socialist party (PSOE).
Sánchez is one of the European leaders who has most insisted on recognising Palestine as a state and has said that Spain will do so by July, Lusa reports.
Last week, he was also in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to address this issue and the situation in the Middle East with “key players from the Arab world and thus explore additional avenues to pacify the region”, in the words of the Spanish government spokeswoman today.
At the end of his visit to Qatar, Pedro Sánchez said that the European Union must play an active role in the search for peace in the Middle East and must build bridges with Arab countries in order to do so.
Earlier, at the end of March, he signed a declaration with three other European prime ministers (from Ireland, Slovenia and Malta) committing themselves to recognising the State of Palestine.
Sánchez will discuss this issue with the new Portuguese prime minister in what will be Luís Montenegro’s first foreign trip as head of government, as announced last week.
Currently, nine EU member states recognise Palestine: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovakia took the step in 1988 before joining the EU, while Sweden did so on its own in 2014.
In Portugal’s case, in December 2014, the parliament approved, with the votes of the PSD, PS and CDS-PP, a draft resolution urging the executive to “recognise, in coordination with the European Union, the State of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state, in accordance with the principles established by international law”.
The previous government, led by the PS, argued that for Portugal, recognising the State of Palestine “is something that should happen”, but in coordination with “some close partners” and at a “moment with consequences for peace”, as the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, told Lusa in November.
Source: LUSA
