The United States Senate this Wednesday suspended the sale of the HIMARS missile system to Hungary in response to the country’s blockade of Sweden’s accession to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
The deal worth $735 million (about €678 million) was blocked by Republican Senator James Rish, who chairs the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“Some time ago, I directly expressed my concern to the Hungarian government about their refusal to vote for Sweden’s entry into NATO,” Risch said in a commentary to the American daily newspaper The Washington Post.
“Due to the fact that we are in June and everything remains the same, I have decided that this new sale of US military equipment to Hungary will be suspended,” the Idaho senator said, urging Budapest to unblock its position if it wants to receive an order that includes 24 batteries of HIMARS rocket launchers and more than 100 rockets and other ancillary parts and accessories.
All major arms sales require the approval of the President of the United States and the heads of the Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees for the State Department to make the sale official.
In this case, Risha’s “no” will not allow the deal to be completed.
The request by Sweden and Finland to join NATO (the Western military-defense bloc) after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 last year and ended centuries of neutrality, is considered one of the geopolitical blows inflicted on Russian President Vladimir. Putin.
However, the accession process was slower than expected due to obstacles placed by Turkey and Hungary, Moscow’s main ally in the West.
Initially, the two Scandinavian countries intended to simultaneously join the Atlantic Alliance, but the blockade of Ankara and Budapest allowed only Finland to do so.
In the case of Sweden, Turkey accuses the government of not doing enough to crack down on Kurdish opposition groups it considers terrorists or suppress anti-Islam protests that burn copies of the Koran, while Hungary criticizes Stockholm’s attack on Hungarian laws . within the European Union, which prevented Budapest from receiving millions of euros from European funds for the post-pandemic recovery of covid-19.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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