Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, will receive this week in Madrid her counterpart from Iraq, Fuad Muhammed Hussein, with whom she will also coincide today in Luxembourg on the occasion of a European Foreign Affairs Council in which the situation in his country will be discussed.
According to Ministry sources, the meeting will take place this Friday and will include a joint press conference. In any case, Gonzalez Laya and Hussein will have the opportunity to meet today in Luxembourg during the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, which will be chaired by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, and in which there will be an exchange of views on Belarus, Iraq and Latin America and an informal meeting of the European Foreign Ministers with Fuad Hussein during the working lunch.
Hussein’s visit could be interpreted as a return of the trip that Gonzalez Laya had planned to make last April to Baghdad, which was suspended at the last minute after a case of COVID-19 was detected in the Spanish delegation upon its arrival in Kuwait, the first stage of that trip.
On that occasion, the minister wanted to express the Spanish government’s support for the political process initiated by the government of Mustafa Al Kadhemi, which should lead to general elections next October that will serve to put an end to the crisis opened after the popular mobilizations of October 2019 and the strong repression exercised by the militias against the demonstrators. Gonzalez Laya also wanted to convey his support to the Prime Minister in the complicated context in which the country finds itself due to other socio-economic problems, such as the drop in oil prices and a pandemic that has only deteriorated the situation.
Gonzalez Laya had also scheduled to meet with the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, Jeanine Antoinette Plasschaert, and with the heads of the Spanish military contingent, which participates with 144 troops in the mission of the International Coalition against Daesh and with another 49 in NATO’s NMI operation.
