Spanish and Portuguese Foreign and Defence Ministers to talk about Middle East, Ukraine and Africa

Eduardo González The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, will meet next Monday, October 21, at the Santa Cruz Palace in Madrid with their Portuguese counterparts, Paulo Rangel and Nuno Melo, to analyse the international situation and deepen their coordination in the face of the crisis. The main challenges in terms of security and defence. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agenda will include the risk of regional escalation in the Middle East, the situation of the UN mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the need for a ceasefire to allow a peace process to begin. The current governments of Spain and Portugal agree on the main diagnosis of the situation in the Gaza Strip (support for the ceasefire, the release of hostages, the arrival of humanitarian aid and the two-state solution), but they disagree on the convenience of recognising the Palestinian State now. While Spain took that step on 28 May, the Prime Minister of Portugal, Luis Montenegro, warned a month earlier, during a meeting with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, that it was preferable to first reach an “international consensus” within the EU and the UN. Other topics of interest at the meeting will be the war against Ukraine following the Russian invasion, military support, the peace plan proposed by President Volodymyr Zekensky and presented this Thursday to the European Council in Brussels and the prospect of this country's accession to the European Union. The situation in Africa will also be discussed, specifically on the political developments in the Sahel, the Security and Defence Policy on the continent, maritime security and development cooperation. The discussions will close on relations between the EU and NATO, the Southern Neighbourhood and the Spanish presidency of the Western Mediterranean Forum in 2024. The holding of this ministerial meeting, in a 2+2 format, precedes the Spanish-Portuguese Summit, which will be held on 23 October in Faro (Portugal). This is the second time that the Foreign and Defence ministers have met in this format, fulfilling the annual commitment provided for in the Trujillo Treaty of Friendship, adopted during the XXXII Spanish-Portuguese Bilateral Summit in October 2021 and which came into force in May 2023. In 2023, the meeting did not take place under this format because Spain was, at that time, with a caretaker government following the elections of 23 July. The first (and last) 2+2 meeting took place in Lisbon in November 2022. Spain was also represented that day by Albares and Robles, while Portugal was represented by the socialists João Gomes Cravinho (Foreign Affairs) and Helena Carreiras (Defence). The current Portuguese Executive is in the hands of the centre-right Social Democratic Party, since the elections last March.

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