Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka (Motorists) will fly to the United States on Wednesday, and attend the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday as an observer, Seznam Zpravy reported yesterday.
“I will represent the Prime Minister there,” Macinka told the server.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) said yesterday evening that the trip will take place with his agreement. “Yes, it has been agreed with me. We will be there in an observer role, like Italy, for example,” he wrote to CTK.
Macinka had to postpone his first trip to the US at the beginning of February, as his flight was cancelled due to bad weather. He returned from the German airport in Frankfurt am Main.
The Czech Republic received an invitation to join the Board of Peace established by US President Donald Trump in late January. Babis previously said that the Czech Republic was not currently considering joining, and is waiting for the positions of allies in the EU and NATO. He said then that both houses of the Czech parliament would have to find agreement on joining the Board, which would be difficult.
At the beginning of this month, Macinka was supposed to attend a conference on critical minerals, on the invitation of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to Seznam Zpravy, Macinka could meet him this week, though the bilateral meeting has not yet been confirmed.
Trump formally established the Board of Peace in January on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, alongside invited statesmen. The founding members who signed the document included Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Argentine President Javier Milei, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Israel, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Argentina, Morocco, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have joined Trump’s project so far. From the European Union, Hungary and Bulgaria have joined. On the other hand, France and Slovakia have announced that they will not join at this time, while Germany also expressed reservations.
Italy wants to join as an observer, and the Czech Republic could thus follow this route. Italy has not yet announced who it will send to the meeting in Washington, the server wrote.
Reuters news agency previously reported that Trump is to become the first and lifelong chairman of the board, and will decide which countries will be invited to join. The server noted that experts have concerns that the new platform might weaken the United Nations.
Seznam Zpravy reported that Macinka might also meet representatives of The Heritage Foundation, an influential far-right think tank in the United States. Macinka met representatives of this think tank, which is close to Trump’s administration and the MAGA movement, when they were invited to Prague’s CEVRO University several years ago, at a lecture organised by former Czech national security adviser Tomas Pojar and MEP Alexandr Vondra (ODS).
