Opinions & Interviews

Greminger thanks Belarus for supporting OSCE approaches

MINSK, 4 February (BelTA) – The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) appreciates Belarus’ contribution to resolving regional issues and thanks the Belarusian side and personally Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for supporting the OSCE approaches, OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger told the Belarus 1 TV channel on 3 February, BelTA has learned.

Thomas Greminger noted that he had met with the Belarusian president several times and he is grateful that the president shares the OSCE approaches. “Thanks to him, Belarus has managed to become a so-called bridge builder between West and East,” the OSCE Secretary General underlined. He emphasized the importance of the stance of the Belarusian leader who promotes the idea of a multi-polar world. “In such conditions everything is in place for efficient cooperation between the OSCE and Belarus,” Thomas Greminger is convinced.

He noted that today’s generation witnesses a historically low level of trust between the key members of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community. “The rift between West and East is throwing us back to the time when the Helsinki process was still nascent,” he noted.

Speaking about the role of the OSCE, Thomas Greminger explained that the major task of the organization is to provide a platform for finding common solutions to confront modern threats. The number of these threats is growing to include military threats, cyber-security threats, radical extremism, illegal drug trade, trafficking in human beings and weapons, large-scale migration flows and climate change. Even the most powerful nations in the world are not capable of solving all these problems on their own; teamwork and joint efforts are needed to find solutions, the OSCE Secretary General believes.

Minsk regularly hosts major conferences and events aimed at working out joint solutions. For example, the Belarusian capital played host to the conference “Eastern Europe: In Search of Security for All” in May 2018 and the high-level international conference "Preventing and Countering Terrorism in the Digital Age" in October.

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