The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured yesterday before the plenary session of Congress that Spain has, “of course”, no intention of deploying troops in Ukraine, despite the statements of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in which he doesn’t rule out sending European soldiers to the country. Likewise, he reiterated that the Government has not granted any arms export license to Israel since October 7.
“There are not going to be Spanish troops in Ukraine, of course not, because we want peace,” said Albares in response to a question from Jordi Salvador, from ERC. “The Government of Spain, in Gaza and Ukraine, wants the same thing: peace and respect for international law,” he assured.
Last Monday, Macron declared, at the end of the International Conference in Support of Ukraine on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Russian invasion, that, although “there is currently no consensus to officially send troops on the ground, nothing should be excluded”. However, the French president did not specify whether his country would send soldiers to Ukraine.
The following day, the Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, warned at the press conference after the Council of Ministers that the Executive did not agree with the sending of European troops to Ukraine and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, warned during the Paris Conference (without referring to any specific action) that “unity has been and is the most effective weapon against Putin” and, therefore, that any new measure must “be born from consensus and debate among all allies”.
Arms to Israel
On the other hand, Albares reiterated yesterday, as he has done on other occasions, that the Government has not authorized any new arms export license to Israel since last October 7, when the Hamas terrorist attacks occurred that triggered the current Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, and that “this will continue to be the case as long as the spiral of violence in Gaza that we want to end lasts.”
The minister once again recalled the Government’s “clear stance” in favor of a ceasefire, immediate access for humanitarian aid to the Strip, the release of all Hamas hostages and the two-state formula (Israel and Palestine) as “only solution” to the conflict.
According to Albares, “no country has gone as far” as Spain in its support for peace in the Middle East and the Palestinian civilian population and, in this sense, he asked Jordi Salvador to “search the international community if there is any country that has gone as far as Spain in its support for peace in Palestine and the Palestinian civilian population: I can tell you that you will not find it.”
In this regard, the minister recalled that Spain is one of the few countries that has maintained and even increased its aid to the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). that the Government is preparing a “much larger” financial aid package – announced by Albares himself during his recent speech before the UN General Assembly in New York – that Spain has imposed individual sanctions on Israeli settlers responsible for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and that, this Monday, the Government defended before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories represent a violation of International Law.
