Kuwait shouldered responsibility towards int’l community: FM
BRUSSELS: Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Kuwait, said yesterday that since the first pledging conference that was held in Kuwait, the country has shouldered its responsibly towards the international community and to the Syrian people.
“We were hoping that the only pledging conference for the crisis would be that of Kuwait in 2013, but unfortunately today we are obliged to organize many other pledging conferences and we reached the fifth one,” he told a news conference after the first session of the international conference on Syria in Brussels.
He noted that this protracted crisis has spilled over to the neighboring countries and many UN reports draw our urgent need to access swiftly the beneficiaries within Syria and also to extend assistance and help to neighboring countries who host a great number of refugees, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“Along with this humanitarian assistance we also need a development program in order to upgrade the capacities of infrastructures like electricity, energy, roads,” he said. “We need to work on the political track in order to allow the Syrian people to sit around the negotiating table and provide for security and stability. These were the main topics that we were able to talk about this morning,” he added.
In other news, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled met yesterday with UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. The meeting, held on sidelines of the conference, tackled means of boosting the Kuwaiti-UK relations, regional and international issues of joint concern.
Separately, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled met with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri, discussing identical topics Senior ministry officials attended the two meetings. Later today, he met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, also tackling similar issues.
In addition, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled held separate meetings with Japan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Kentaro Sonoura and Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano. The meetings touched on enhancing relations between Kuwait and the respective foreign nations on all possible levels. The meetings also touched on important regional and international matters. Senior Kuwaiti diplomats and foreign ministry officials attended the meetings.