‘Most pressing issues’: What were Lukashenka and Medvedev talking about in Minsk?

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Friday.

The parties discussed the most pressing issues of the bilateral relations and collaboration in integration associations, state-run news agency BelTA reports.

During the talks, Lukashenka and Medvedev might have touched on the questions of Belarus’ paying off debt for Russian gas and the fate of ‘secret’ agreements.

As reported earlier, in spite of solemn assurances, Belarus failed to clear arrears ($280 mln) for the supplied Russian natural gas. Later, the Belarusian side expressed readiness to settle the debt after signing agreements ‘on some other issues’, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on October 26.

Meanwhile, at today’s meeting with the heads of the government delegations of the EEU and the CIS member states, Alyaksandr Lukashenka urged them to prompt implementation of agreements in EEU.

“We are not comfortable with long-run timeframes for the creation of the common gas and oil market and for the liberalization of the procedure for freight carriers from one country that handle transportation between two points located in another country,” he stressed.

belsat.eu, following BelTA