Lukashenka interested in borrowing funds from EU with no backdown on political prisoners
Belarus President Aliaksandr Lukashenka wants to expand ‘unbiased’ cooperation ‘without any prejudices’ with Latvia and other EU member states, he said Friday at the meeting with Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics.
He has expressed hope that Latvia will help it facilitate contacts with other members of the bloc as this Baltic country is holding presidency in the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2015.
“We have always said that although we maintain very friendly relations with the neighboring states – Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine – we are very interested in closer ties with the West as it has advanced technologies and resources. We borrow a lot of funds from them to implement projects using western technologies. Therefore, if Latvia helps us establish closer relations with the EU during its presidency (and later), we will really appreciate it,” state-owned news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenka as saying.
In his turn, Edgars Rinkevics stresses that Latvia will be doing its utmost to apply individual approaches to the relations between the EU and every state of the Eastern Partnership program.
“As the country which presides in the European Union in H1, we are interested in further development of the Eastern Partnership initiative. Riga will host the [EaP] summit. We would like to do our best to give a new impetus to the relations between the European Union and Belarus,” Edgars Rinkevics said.
Latvia expects that the Riga summit in May will be attended by top-level officials from the European Union and the Eastern Partnership countries
A day earlier Edgars Rinkevics had a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Uladzimir Makey. They discussed the issue of participation of Belarus in the EaP Summit.
Euroradio asked Uladzimir Makey who would represent Belarus at the summit in Riga.
“The issue is being considered. The head of state will decide who will go to the summit,” the Belarusian Foreign Minister answered.
It is noteworthy that Aliaksandr Lukashenka never represented Belarus at the previous summits in Prague, Warsaw and Vilnius as the EU blacklisted the Belarusian president and his sons for serious violations of human rights, for the repression of civil society and the democratic opposition or for undermining democracy and the rule of law in Belarus.
The Belarusian delegation will take part in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Riga only ‘on equal footing’, Foreign Minister of Belarus Uladzimir Makey told TV channel ONT in early February. His statement might have been a response to the words of Lithuanian Deputy FM Andrius Krivas who said Europe will lift the existing sanctions against Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka only after ‘major progress in the area of human rights’ is shown and political prisoners are released.
