Csaba Hende: Civil War Situation in Ukraine Needs Peaceful Solution
Szöveg: honvedelem.hu / MTI | 2014. június 6. 9:00The NATO member states are trying to find a peaceful, political solution to the civil war situation in Ukraine and to resolve the conflict through negotiations, Minister of Defence Csaba Hende told Hungarian journalists in his press briefing on Tuesday, June 3 in Brussels.
The Minister of Defence told Hungarian News Agency MTI that Hungary is providing military support to Ukraine in two fields. On the one hand, it continues to provide rehabilitation and treatment in Hungary to Ukrainian soldiers wounded in action, and on the other, it has offered Ukrainian officers an opportunity to participate in a military English language course in Budapest.
Minister Hende said that at the meeting, which partly paves the way for the NATO Summit to be held in Wales in September, the Defence Ministers have approved a list of 16 points which identifies those areas where increased efforts should be made to deal with the shortfalls in allied defence capabilities.
The Minister also noted that to achieve this goal, the member states must increase their defence budgets, and stop the harmful practice of earlier years, when many NATO countries gradually cut their defence spending year after year. He referred to the fact that Hungary had already decided in 2012 to keep defence expenditures level until 2016 and to increase them afterwards with 0.1 per cent of the GDP every year. As he noted, so far the government of Hungary has exceeded this target every year, when it allocated additional resources for various purposes.
Minister Hende said that the meeting of Defence Ministers of the Visegrád Four (V4) countries – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – had been held in Brussels immediately before the NATO meeting which started on Tuesday. The participants of the V4 meeting – which was meant to close a one-year term of Hungary as presidency nation – discussed defence policy issues concerning the Budapest Declaration, which is to be approved by the V4 heads of government at the end of June, and the formation of a V4 battle group by 1st January 2016.
“I have the pleasure to announce, that the government of Hungary has decided to allocate, above the budget, close to HUF 3 billion as extra resource to generating close air support (CAS) capability for this battle group", the Minister announced. Once this capability is in place, the fighters can use laser-guided bombs to hit targets designated by Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs), so the air-to-ground strike capability of Gripen fighter aircraft will be generated. With this, Hungary will become the second largest contributor in the V4 battle group after Poland, Csaba Hende noted. As he added, the V4 ministers reaffirmed their intention to involve Ukraine, with the capabilities it can make available, in the activity of the V4 battle group.
Photo: nato.int
