BUDAPEST: Hungary is an integral part of the West, has opened its doors to the East, and now it is time to explore Southern business opportunities, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
Addressing a two-day meeting of Hungarian ambassadors, Orban said the strategy of opening to the East had been successful and that its initial phases should be finished by year-end.
He added he would undertake summit visits to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, local wire service MTI reported.
Hungary needs to complete its opening to the South within the next year or two, so foreign policy will be targeting Africa and Latin America, Orban noted.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto would soon begin visiting the Southern regions in preparation for summit visits in 2016, he said.
Regarding the West, two referendums adopted by the Hungarian people one to join NATO and the other to join the European Union — have “put us squarely and irrevocably in the West, giving no one in public life a right to question where we belong,” Orban said.
Orban Eastern Opening policy aims to tighten commercial, political and cultural relations with Asian countries.
