Slovenian President Borut Pahor has announced that his country will not recognize the Palestinian state at this stage claiming that such move would aggravate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This decision followed a statement by Slovenia’s foreign minister Karl Erjavec last Monday that his country is in the process of recognizing the state of Palestine. However the president later said that the right moment for the recognition has not come yet.
Following his meeting with the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in Brussels Erjavec said that the Slovenian government plans to recognize the Palestinian state next Spring.
The parliament’s foreign affairs committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to approve the proposal and submit it to the parliament for a vote in March or April 2018 according to Slovenia’s RTV channel.
Slovenia’s ambassador to Israel Barbara Sušnik on Monday told Agence France-Presse that the US president Donald Trump’s recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was one of the reasons that prompted Ljubljana to accelerate its plan to recognize the Palestinian state which was first put forward in 2014.
Of the 28 European Union (EU) countries only nine recognize the state of Palestine. Sweden is the only country to recognize Palestine while it is a member of the EU. The rest of the Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary Poland Bulgaria Romania Malta and Cyprus made this move before becoming EU members.
It is clear that Slovenia has backtracked on the recognition move in response to a US-Israeli request in order to pressure the Palestinians to accept Washington’s “deal of the century”.
