Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán’s planned meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, 27 October, has disappeared from the State Department’s official schedule, casting uncertainty over the first anticipated minister-level bilateral talks between the Trump administration and Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza government.
The change comes barely a day after Anita Orbán announced that she would meet Rubio in Washington. The State Department’s preliminary weekly schedule, issued on Sunday, 25 October, explicitly listed the meeting at its Washington headquarters. However, the official daily programme released on Monday evening made no mention of the Hungarian minister, stating instead that Rubio would accompany President Donald Trump on a visit to Texas.
According to the Associated Press, Trump and Rubio are expected to visit Port Arthur to inspect an oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude for processing at Texas refineries. Trump is also scheduled to campaign for Republican candidates at rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock ahead of November’s midterm elections, although it remains unclear whether Rubio will participate in the campaign events.
As Hungarian Conservative reported on Monday, the scheduled meeting carried considerable diplomatic significance. Anita Orbán was expected to pursue the preservation of energy, investment and defence agreements inherited from former prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government, including Hungary’s US sanctions exemption for Russian oil and gas, which is due to expire on 21 November, despite the government’s ongoing diplomatic realignment towards the European Union and its accountability campaign against former officials from Viktor Orbán’s administrations.
At the time of writing, neither Washington nor Budapest has publicly confirmed whether the bilateral meeting has been cancelled, postponed or rescheduled. No alternative date has been announced.
Hungarian Conservative sent an inquiry to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry regarding the meeting and will update this article if it receives a response.
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