Slovak President, Peter Pellegrini, said that the peace negotiation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict can only be achieved with the help of “big players” like India, China, and the United States.
Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the ‘Summit of the Future’ at the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York, Pelligrini said that India can play an important role in future peace negotiations amid the conflict that has been going on behind Slovakia’s eastern borders, where it shares its boundary with Ukraine.
“I think the peace in Ukraine can be negotiated only with the help of such big players in world politics like India, China, the United States, and so on. It is impossible to have peace summits without one part of the conflict, that is Russia but I think India can play a very important role in these peace negotiations in the future,” he said.
He also appreciated the adoption of a compact for the future during a time when the world is witnessing 56 conflicts around the world and the United Nations is not being able to handle them.
“I think at this moment there are 56 conflicts around the globe and the UN is not able to handle them. So that’s why I’m happy that yesterday a compact for the future was adopted with huge unanimity. Of course, not 100 per cent of countries voted, but I think that was the first signal that the UN and the multilateralism are still alive,” he said.
He also said that Slovakia had always advocated for peace negotiations and that they had to try their best to sit around the table and start peace negotiations to stop the war and killings of the people.
“Slovakia is a neighbour of Ukraine, where we have now a war behind our Eastern borders… We are now very close to a war conflict. But from the beginning, Slovakia has been an advocate of peace negotiations. We have to do our best to try to sit around the table and start the peace negotiations to stop the war and the killing of people,” he said.
He later noted that peace negotiations were crucial and that they had to start doing something about it rather than just holding talks on it.
“Otherwise, if we just continue to keep the war alive and it doesn’t matter if it is Ukraine or Israel, every second somebody will be killed on both sides of the conflict. So peace negotiations are crucial. We don’t have to speak about it; we have to start to also do something about it,” Pelligrini stated.
