Maira Mora, Head of the EU delegation to Belarus, has arrived in Minsk, news web site charter’97 reports with reference to a EU Commission official.
«She has already come back and commenced her duties,» the official said.
On February 27, 2012 EU Foreign Affairs ministers agreed an assets freeze and visa ban against 19 magistrates and two highly placed police officers who are suspected of stifling Belarus’ political opposition.
In response, Head of the EU delegation to Belarus Majra Mora and Leszek Szerepka, the Polish Ambassador to Belarus, were invited to the Belarusian MFA. In the statement published on the MFA’s web site, Press-Secretary Andrey Savinykh attacked the policy of sanctions and declares: «Head of the EU Delegation to the Republic of Belarus and Ambassador of Poland to Belarus have also received the recommendations to return to their capitals for consultations and to convey to their leadership a firm position of the Belarusian Side on inadmissibility of pressure and sanctions.»
In their turn, EU member countries’ ambassadors in Minsk were withdrawn in solidarity.The decision was made at a meeting of EU ambassadors, where they also decided that countries where Belarus had an ambassador would call these in to issue a formal protest.
In the meantime, on April 26, 2012 Aliaksandr Lukashenka told journalists that the European Union has recognized the futility of sanctions against Belarus.
The president said: «Do you think Europeans would have abandoned sanctions if they realized the sanctions are effective and we might be won over? They never would. They would have pressured us, put to our knees, then dig us mid knee or maybe even deeper. They may have understood that sanctions is a way nowhere, that sanctions have no future. They may have understood that they need Belarus.»
Lukashenka reminded that Belarus had decided to relocate some forces from the western border to the south. He remarked the bordering nations had appealed to Belarus, complaining the border had been left wide open. «But we don’t have money. Yes, I can increase the number of customs and border guard stations but pay us, please,» state-owned news agency Belta quotes Aliaksandr Lukashenka as saying. When Belarus loosened control, the West faced an entire wave of migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Asia, the president said.
Belsat
