WASHINGTON, 10 (From the special envoy of EUROPA PRESS, Leyre Guijo)
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, assured this Friday that the North American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, “respects Spain’s sovereign position” of recognizing Palestine while making it clear that his trip It was not intended to obtain Washington’s “acquiescence” before taking the step.
Blinken “respects Spain’s sovereign position, he has not issued any comments on the matter,” he indicated at a press conference in Washington after his meeting of almost an hour and a half with the Secretary of State. “At no time have I noticed any type of discrepancy,” she stressed, emphasizing that the Secretary of State already knew the Spanish position because it is public.
The minister stressed that the objective of his visit, which he had been preparing since the summer, was not to “report on the recognition” since “it is a sovereign decision,” he stressed. In no case, he insisted, was there “a request for information or acquiescence” on the part of the United States.
“We have talked about the Middle East and Gaza like many other topics and we would have talked exactly the same if recognition had already occurred or was not going to occur,” he argued.
Albares has emphasized that the two governments want to “achieve peace and stability” and he has explained specifically how Spain sees it.
The Spanish Government wants “a permanent and immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of all the hostages and unhindered access for humanitarian aid through land points and the recognition of the Palestinian State to make the State solution irreversible along with the normalization of the Arab States with the State of Israel,” he summarized.
Regarding the specific date on which this recognition will occur, he insisted that “when there is a definitive date the Government will make it known publicly.”
On another note, Albares confirmed that Spain and Ukraine have already completed the negotiation of the bilateral security agreement, but did not want to go into details. “We will report promptly when it is jointly appropriate,” he stated.
However, he stressed that “it is one more step to structure, as all the G7 countries have done and many other European countries are doing, and to give predictability to Ukraine” regarding the security support that it will receive. “In the end, that support for Ukraine that we say is grounded in something very concrete for as long as necessary,” he stressed.
The conflict in Ukraine has been one of the treaties. According to Albares, they have explored “mechanisms to make aid to Ukraine as effective as possible” ahead of the NATO summit next July in Washington.
The meeting, at the beginning of which saw the signing of a memorandum of understanding to combat disinformation, particularly in Spanish, has also made it possible to address, in addition to bilateral relations, other topics of interest to both countries, such as the situation in the Sahel, in Central America and in Haiti.