Hungarian foreign policy successful in 2013

Hungarian foreign policy has been successful in the past year, and major parts of the attacks against Hungary have been averted, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said on Wednesday. In an interview with Hungarian News Agency MTI, Martonyi said Hungary achieved the greatest success in Central European politics. Hungary holds the Chairmanship of the Central European Initiative (CEI) this year, and is at the helm of the rotating presidency of the Visegrad Four Group (V4), Martonyi said. In his opinion the co-operation was stronger during the first half of the Hungarian V4 Presidency, and hopefully this trend would continue in the future, he said. The foreign minister admitted that there are disputes with neighboring countries, but said "we do not sweep them under the rug." In relation to the government's "Eastern opening" policy, he said Hungary is one of the most open economies in the world, and the job of diplomacy is to further improve the conditions for economic cooperation. The heads of state of Vietnamese, Indonesian and Singapore had visited Hungary, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Japan and India, he said, adding that the high-level visits indicated the success of the Eastern opening. When speaking of the European Union, Martonyi said that further EU enlargement is the target of the Hungarian diplomacy. He also stated that attacks against Hungary had been successfully averted, and the last stage of the year was much calmer than the first two-thirds. The reason is that the government and diplomacy well represented its viewpoints at appropriate forums, and the claims against Hungary proved to be false, he said. "We respect everyone's opinion, but we protect our actual facts at all forums," he said.