Diplomat: Belarus will not allow hushing up topic of sanctions and their impact on food security

MINSK, 6 December (BelTA) - Belarus will not allow sweeping the topic of sanctions and their impact on food security under the rug, Belarus' representative Kirill Petrovsky said as he addressed the 171st session of the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome to highlight the impact of sanctions on food security, BelTA learned from the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"In the Russian language there is an expression: ‘the deaf talking to the blind'. We have been having this kind of the dialogue on sanctions for almost a year," Kirill Petrovsky emphasized. “At first, the US and the EU were persuading the council that they imposed no sanctions on fertilizers. Then they changed the concept: indeed they did impose the sanctions but it was Russia who was to blame for this."

"When Belarus said that the sanctions on its fertilizers and producers had been imposed long before February 2022, they changed the rhetoric again: ‘there are no sanctions against fertilizers from Russia'. And what about those from Belarus?" the diplomat asked a rhetorical question.

He continued: "During the 50th plenary session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) which was held in Rome in October, we did not reach an agreement because Belarus, Russia and Venezuela did not allow sweeping the topic of sanctions and their impact on food security under the rug. We will not allow them to continue to deceive the whole world. Fertilizer sanctions do exist, they have a direct impact on food security, and FAO should assess this impact."

"There is a set of factors affecting the level of world food security. You need to recognize them in order to actually find a way out,” Belarus' representative said.