MINSK, 5 October (BelTA) - Relations between Belarus and Pakistan are growing strategic, Belarusian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolai Borisevich said as he opened the fifth meeting of the Belarus-Pakistan Business Council, BelTA has learned.
"A little more than two weeks ago in Dushanbe, at a meeting with the Pakistan prime minister, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that Belarus is extremely interested in cooperation with such a big country as Pakistan. I am convinced that your specialists and members of the government will find a lot of interesting things for Pakistan in Belarus. By the end of this year, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei is set to visit Islamabad. We expect the prime minister of Pakistan to pay an official visit to Minsk. Preparations for the sixth meeting of the joint Belarus-Pakistan commission on trade and economic cooperation are actively underway. Thus, the relations between our countries are truly turning strategic, acquiring the strategic content," the deputy minister said.
Nikolai Borisevich stressed that today Minsk is hosting a big business delegation of Pakistan, whose mission is to strengthen the economic potential of bilateral relations. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus is a well-organized team of professionals who work to promote trade, economic and investment cooperation with foreign partners. Like the BelCCI, we are sincerely open to communication on a wide range of issues without any exceptions and restrictions," the deputy foreign minister said.
He also noted that "today the countries are not starting with a clean slate." "We have created the basic conditions for the development of bilateral relations across the areas of mutual interest. We have developed a legal framework, which includes more than 80 agreements, mechanisms for interaction in the form of commissions and working groups. We have put together a framework for interregional cooperation, laid the foundations for inter-parliamentary diplomacy and much more," Nikolai Borisevich explained.
According to the deputy minister, it is important that the parties ensure the progressive development of promising points of growth. "In our opinion, taking into account the structure of the economies of Belarus and Pakistan, we can identify several key areas of work. In particular, we can step up mutual trade of traditional products, set up joint manufactures of Belarusian equipment in Pakistan, and also joint ventures to make surgical instruments and leather products in Belarus. Setting up joint medicine production clusters is promising. They can be based both in Belarus and in Pakistan. We need to attract Pakistani capital into projects to upgrade Belarusian enterprises of the textile industry, to develop joint agricultural manufactures, to implement joint scientific projects with commercialization opportunities and also projects to create a university of applied technologies in Pakistan that will provide quhigh-quality joint professional and technical training of Pakistani specialists using Belarusian educational technologies,” Nikolai Borisevich noted.
Speaking about promising areas of cooperation, the deputy minister stressed that they are fully in sync with the economic interests of both Belarus and Pakistan. “Let's use today's meeting to determine what steps we can take to boost cooperation, what projects we can implement together. We are ready to listen to your opinion and discuss ways to further cooperation. We need to jointly craft acceptable approaches to ensure more active and substantive development of trade and economic relations," the deputy foreign minister said addressing the participants of the meeting.
