Spain Says It Will Not Join Trump’s Board Of Peace

BRUSSELS, Jan 23 (Bernama-dpa) -- Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday said that Spain would not join US President Donald Trump's newly launched Board of Peace, an initiative critics see as undermining the United Nations, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported.

"We appreciate the invitation, but we decline," Sánchez told reporters after an EU summit in Brussels. 

"We are doing this, mainly and fundamentally, for the sake of consistency," Sánchez said, adding that the decision was consistent "with the multilateral order, the United Nations' system and with international law."

The Spanish premier also pointed out that the body "has not included the Palestinian Authority".

Trump on Thursday formally launched the body at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, signing its founding charter alongside a diverse group of countries. 

Some 60 governments have been invited to join, but few of Washington's Western allies have publicly accepted, with Hungary and Bulgaria the only European Union members to have signed on so far. Other signatories are Argentina, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Two of Washington's biggest rivals, Russia and China, have been invited but have yet to make firm commitments. 

Trump originally conceived the board as a body to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following the war between Israel and the Palestinian organisation Hamas.

He has since suggested the body's ambitions could be stepped up to handle conflicts and crises worldwide and said at the ceremony that the board "can spread out to other things" beyond Gaza.

-- BERNAMA-dpa