Spain Announces Its Refusal to Join Trump’s ‘Peace Council’

SadaNews - Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stated early Friday that Spain will not join the ‘Peace Council’ recently launched by U.S. President Donald Trump, an initiative that its critics see as undermining the United Nations.

Sanchez told reporters after an EU summit in Brussels: “We appreciate the invitation, but we reject it,” according to the German news agency.

He added: “We are doing this fundamentally for coherence,” pointing out that the decision is consistent with “the multilateral system, the United Nations framework, and international law.”

The Spanish Prime Minister also noted that the council “did not include the Palestinian Authority.”

Trump officially launched the body on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps resort of Davos, where he signed its founding charter alongside a diverse group of countries.

About 60 governments were invited to join, but few of Washington's Western allies publicly accepted, with Hungary and Bulgaria being the only EU members to have signed so far.

Also invited were two of the United States' biggest rivals, Russia and China, but they have yet to make confirmed commitments.

Trump originally envisioned the council as a body to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following the war between Israel and the Palestinian ‘Hamas’ movement.

Since then, he has suggested the possibility of expanding the council’s ambitions to address conflicts and crises worldwide and stated at the ceremony that the council “could extend to include other matters” beyond Gaza.

Many analysts view this proposal as an attack on the United Nations, which Trump claims to value but has repeatedly criticized for failing to resolve conflicts.