Not neutral enough: Minsk may not host talks on Ukraine


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Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, Alyaksandr Lukashenka February 2015

Kyiv wants to a venue for meetings of the contact group on Ukraine to be moved from Belarus to another country, Hanna Hopko, a representative of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, says.

As reported earlier, the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee, in its first action on Crimea, adopted a resolution drafted by Ukraine and backed by the United States, France, and Britain by a vote of 73 to 23 on November 15, with 76 abstentions. Belarus was among the 23 countries that voted against the document.

“The vote which took place on 15 November caused public embarrassment in Ukraine. There has been a lot of top-level talks and Belarus has always presented itself as a regional security donor, i.e. a country regarded both as a negotiation venue and a territory, from which thee will never be any threats to neighboring NATO countries and Ukraine. That is why the current stepping-up of Belarus-Russia military exercises and [Russian] mechanized brigades’s moving closer to the Belarusian border are breeding up our concern and confusion,” said Ms Hopko.

After such voting,  Ukraine cannot count on Belarus’s neutrality anymore, the MP stressed. The final adoption of the UN resolution is to be put to vote in December; if Belarus reiterates its position by voting against this document, Kyiv will definitely take appropriate measures.

“These days, we are doing our best to inform the Belarusian side that the vote in December will be a test for them. I cannot disclose all the details, but Ukraine is considering other countries as a venue for the contact group meetings which have been held in Minsk so far. We realize that Russia’s consent will be neeeded as well, but the vote on the resolution will give the opportunity to raise the issue,” said Hanna Hopko.

The statement by the Foreign Ministry saying that ‘Belarus’ stance on Ukraine remained unchanged’ does not seem to impress Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada.

belsat.eu, following Ej.by, photo by Sputnik

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