Eduardo González
The first day of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in New York, on the occasion of the opening of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, included meetings with the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The Minister also held his first meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart, Carlos Faria, who called for “cordial relations with Spain on the basis of the self-determination of peoples” and with whom he discussed possible energy aid from Caracas to the US and the EU.
Sánchez’s agenda in New York began on Monday evening (Spanish time), when he was received by the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, and met with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, to whom he conveyed Spain’s interest in promoting peace in the region and the two-state solution.
Yesterday, Pedro Sánchez attended the welcome reception offered by Guterres to the Heads of State and Government and, subsequently, the opening session of the General Debate of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, where he was accompanied by José Manuel Albares. The President of the Government will address the General Assembly tomorrow, Thursday, the last day of his stay in New York.
Afterwards, Pedro Sánchez participated, together with Antony Blinken, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the President of Senegal and of the African Union, Macky Sall, in the Global Food Security Summit, during which the President of the Government announced that Spain will contribute 236.5 million euros to finance food security projects in the world over the next three years, 151.5 million euros in donations and a further 85 million euros in loans from AECID’s Fund for the Promotion of Development (FONPRODE). The meeting was attended by up to 18 heads of state and government.
In the afternoon, the President of the Government took part in an event organized by France and New Zealand to fight against jihadism and violence on the Internet and participated in a reception for the Spanish community at the Residence of the Spanish Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, in the presence of Albares.
In the margins of the General Assembly, Pedro Sánchez also held bilateral meetings with the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he thanked for “his efforts in the search for solutions” to the conflict in Ukraine; the President of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum; the Prime Minister of Iraq, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi; the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif; and the President of Bolivia, Luis Alberto Arce.
Albares
Meanwhile, José Manuel Albares -who accompanied Sánchez in his bilateral meetings- held a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Santiago Cafiero, with whom he discussed the preparations for the ministerial meeting between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), to be held in November in Buenos Aires, and attended the ministerial meeting Strengthening Atlantic Cooperation, an initiative launched by Blinken in which representatives of Angola participated, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ireland, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States and at the end of which a Joint Declaration was signed in favor of “a peaceful, prosperous, open and cooperative Atlantic region, while preserving the ocean as a healthy, sustainable and resilient resource for generations to come.”
The minister also met in New York with the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, to whom he reiterated “Spain’s support for the war crimes investigation in Ukraine,” and held a meeting with his Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, and with the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, in the margins of the informal meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, held Monday in New York to analyze the global economic and security situation arising from the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
One of the most awaited moments of Albares’ presence in New York was his meeting with the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Faria, at the United Nations headquarters. During the meeting, as reported by the head of Venezuelan diplomacy through his Twitter account, Faria conveyed to Albares “the will of President Nicolás Maduro to maintain cordial relations with your country, on the basis of respect for the self-determination of peoples”.
For his part, Albares took advantage of his first meeting with Faria (appointed last May) to review bilateral relations and “energy issues of mutual interest”, as the minister indicated in his Twitter account (Maduro has recently announced his intention to export gas and oil to Europe and the United States in the framework of the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine). In addition, the two ministers discussed the upcoming CELAC-EU meeting and the Ibero-American Summit, which will take place in March in the Dominican Republic, according to diplomatic sources informed The Diplomat.
After hearing news of the meeting between Albares and Faria, the PP deputy and spokesperson for Foreign Affairs of the Popular Group in the Congress of Deputies, Valentina Martínez, reproached the minister on her Twitter account that, “while the UN condemned Maduro’s crimes against humanity”, he was “whitewashing the dictatorship for oil”. “Without any shame whatsoever he boasts about his contacts, it is clear that Sánchez has recognised the Venezuelan dictatorship, of course, without prior notice to the House,” he added.
The Minister’s day concluded with a bilateral meeting with the UN Under-Secretary General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, at the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations in New York.
