Opinions & Interviews

FM: Belarus should be friends with any partner who offers a welcoming hand

MINSK, 27 September (BelTA) - We should be friends with any partner who offers a welcoming hand, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei said in an interview to STV Channel, BelTA has learned.

Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei met with Secretary General of the United Nations Organization Antonio Guterres in New York on 25 September. “We pointed out to the inadmissibility of using the UN platform and certain UN structures to discredit Belarus for absolutely far-fetched politically motivated reasons. As it turned out, he [UN Secretary General] did not even know about some things in particular. As I understand it, some of his assistants (and these assistants, as we know, are representatives of a member state of the European Union) are doing a number of, let's say, ugly things behind his back,” the minister said.

According to him, in the near future, if the relevant UN materials are published, “we will reveal how some representatives of the UN team in Belarus used the organization's financial resources allocated, for example, for people with disabilities to support participants of protest actions and so on.”

“I believe that we need to be friends with any partner who offers a welcoming hand. This is our position, and we are willing to be friends with everyone. I am convinced that in a few years, as the examples of other states with which we cooperate show, these partners can be very promising,” Vladimir Makei stressed.

The minister also said that the Belarusian side raised the issue of the situation in the country and the prospects for the development of the constitutional process. “We have conveyed our position that only the evolutionary path of development can ensure success in the development of the state and civil society and lead to a true democracy, which many are so concerned about. Almost all of our European counterparts agreed on this. I also had the opportunity to hear confidential assessments from my European counterparts of a well-known ‘madame’ who is currently self-exiled, and her other colleagues - ‘the children of the revolution’. You know, the assessments are as follows: ‘madame’ and her colleagues are feeling very nervous, given that nothing is probably coming out of their promises. I understand that many people are quite skeptical about the activities of these ‘children of the revolution’, but unfortunately, given the public opinion in their countries, they cannot talk about it openly and are therefore forced to take some steps that supposedly show support for the activities of these ‘children of the revolution’,” the minister said.

In his words, some of his counterparts, having requested a meeting, canceled it after some time. “That is what my Polish counterpart did, although we have a lot to talk about and a lot to discuss, and specific areas of cooperation could have been worked out as a result of this conversation. This also shows how they want to solve the problems that are on our agenda and that should be solved,” stressed the Belarusian minister of foreign affairs.

print version

make home page

add to bookmarks