MINSK, 8 September (BelTA) – The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has commented on the demarche delivered by the Delegation of the European Union to Belarus to the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Belarus on illegal border crossings from Belarus into the European Union. Press Secretary of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anatoly Glaz made the relevant statements, BelTA has learned.
Anatoly Glaz said: “A working meeting with officials of the Delegation of the European Union to Belarus took place at premises of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs today. Matters relating to the situation at the border were discussed. We see it this way. In diplomacy any demarche requires clear and convincing legal reasons instead of emotions, fantasies and assumptions. There are no and there can be no reasons in this case. There are no reasons in the text of the statement made by the EU Delegation either.”
Anatoly Glaz stressed that unlike the European side, which representatives declare a state of emergency to hide their illegal actions from the general public, Belarus honors all its international commitments and acts as transparently as possible.
Anatoly Glaz went on saying: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs arranged a briefing for heads of foreign diplomatic missions after the demise of an Iraqi citizen, who had been forcibly thrown out of Lithuania. By the way, for some reason the Delegation of the European Union to Belarus chose to ignore this event. We invited European diplomats to go to the border in order to see the situation with their own eyes. We have nothing to hide. However, this proposal did not interest anyone either. We helped organize a visit of a UNHCR representative to the border so that he could talk to the refugees personally and see the real situation with refugees at the border with Poland. We enabled access of Red Cross personnel to them. It is the Belarusian side that provides the necessary medical aid to refugees, who the neighboring countries do not want to welcome in violation of their international and national obligations. We are ready to continue pursuing this policy.”
In his words, it is at least incompetent and unprofessional to say that Belarus is somehow involved in the growing number of border crossings. “We have nothing to do with genuine reasons behind the growing number of migrants from troubled areas. But as participants of well-known coalitions the European Union countries are directly involved in it,” Anatoly Glaz remarked.
The press secretary of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Belarus cannot geopolitically influence the choice of routes and destinations of migrants. “The European Union's statement ‘There are no objective reasons for such a sharp increase in illegal crossings…' sounds interesting. I reckon they could tell that to citizens of the donor countries, particularly Afghanistan in the current situation,” the official said.
Anatoly Glaz said that proper protection of its own borders remains an important task for Belarus. “We've presented concrete statistics to the European side. The statistics reflects systemic efforts of the Belarusian border service to suppress illegal migration channels. Regretfully, we didn't hear the same kind of information based on figures from the European side,” he said. “Let me remind you that the European Union acted first last year to stop cooperation on migration and transboundary cooperation with Belarus. The European Union has not responded to our proposals on arranging consultations about migration since April. Then who really politicizes migration while throwing around ultimatums, introducing sanctions, and making the resumption of genuine cooperation, including cooperation in border affairs, dependent on [compliance with] political demands? The answer is obvious.”
At the same time the press secretary once again stressed that Belarus is ready for constructive interaction and cooperation with the European Union on these problems. “The border is always a line of cooperation, not dissension for us,” he said.
