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Pompeo in Hungary hoping to woo Orban away from Moscow
BUDAPEST, Feb 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
arrived in Hungary on Monday, on the first leg of a European tour, hoping
that economic and defence incentives will dissuade Prime Minister Viktor
Orban from getting too close to Russia.
Pompeo is set to meet Orban on the one-day trip to Budapest, from where he
will proceed to Slovakia, another NATO ally that has seen few recent senior
US visitors.
The focus of Pompeo’s trip to Europe is a US-driven conference on the
Middle East in Poland later this week, which has been toned down after
European allies were uneasy about promoting President Donald Trump’s hawkish
line on Iran.
Orban is one of the few European leaders to praise Trump, sharing the
mogul-turned-president’s antipathy for migrants and his belief in promoting a
Christian cultural identity.
While the previous president, Barack Obama, tended to cold-shoulder Orban,
the Trump administration has taken the opposite tack, but the strategy has
little to show for it so far.
US officials said that Pompeo will discuss ways to increase defence and
economic cooperation with Hungary.
While Hungary is treaty-bound to the United States through NATO, US
officials are pushing for progress on a bilateral defence cooperation
agreement, which would let US forces move freely in the country.
Such an agreement could prove controversial if Hungary is the stage for a
US military operation. And it would be sure to irritate President Vladimir
Putin, who has considered Orban his closest friend in the European Union.
Putin visited Budapest twice last year, with Orban welcoming him in
defiance of Western efforts to isolate him over Moscow’s support to
separatist insurgents in Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
The United States has also voiced worries over Hungary’s growing
relationship with China, including an agreement for telecom giant Huawei to
develop the country’s fifth-generation mobile networks.
Washington has been ramping up pressure on Huawei — with senior executives
of the company arrested in US allies Canada and Poland.
It warns that China could come to dominate the next wave of technology,
with grave repercussions for the protection of individual data and the safety
of infrastructure.
MORE/SSS/1731 hrs
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Hungary has said it has no plans to revisit the decision to award the 5G
networks contract to Huawei. And critics say that Washington’s concerns have
as much to do with preserving US commercial dominance as with security.
– Alarm at Hungary’s direction –
Pompeo also plans to discuss expanding exchanges between the US and Hungary
to strengthen Hungarian independent media and the ability of law enforcement
to crack down on corruption, officials said.
The US has voiced alarm over the direction Hungary has taken in these areas
recently, including a decision last year to return two Russian arms dealers
home rather than to extradite them to face charges in the United States.
And the prestigious Central European University last year moved its key
programmes out of Hungary after the government — rejecting direct appeals
from the US ambassador — cracked down on educational institutions considered
foreign.
The university was founded by George Soros, the US-Hungarian billionaire
and champion of liberal values, who has been vilified by the far-right in
both countries with imagery that is at times anti-Semitic.
Joerg Forbrig, an expert on Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of
the United States, doubted that the Trump administration could change Orban.
The European Union has for years tried to use its power of the purse to
reform Orban but to no avail, with Hungary wilfully exercising its veto
within the 28-member bloc.
“The Hungarian government has been completely defiant to anything that the
US may have wanted and there seems to be very little that anyone can do about
it,” Forbrig said.
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