MINSK, 2 July (BelTA) - The necessary conditions have not been created for the Belarusian delegation to participate in the OSCE PA summer session in Vienna, Chairman of the Standing Commission on International Affairs of the House of Representatives Andrei Savinykh told the media, BelTA has learned.
"Being the chairman of the Belarusian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I was planning to travel to Vienna to present Belarus' position on the issues on the OSCE current agenda. Naturally, the plan was to discuss a wide range of issues, including the situation in Belarus. But yesterday we received the information that we were denied visas," Andrei Savinykh said.
According to him, the Austrian Embassy in Belarus does not issue visas. "On their suggestion, we applied for visas to the Latvian consulate in Vitebsk. The visas were denied. The visa denial document reads that the Republic of Poland entered an alert into the Schengen Information System to refuse entry into the Schengen area. The document cites the reasons for denying a visa. I rule out the inaccurate data in the visa application as a possible reason for refusal. I also think it is impossible to doubt that I may not leave the Schengen area before the visa expires. So it goes that most likely reasons may be: you pose a threat to public order or internal security, you pose a threat to the international relations of the Schengen countries," the MP said.
Andrei Savinykh explained why Poland made such an unfriendly move. “When discussing the situation in Belarus, we planned to bring up the issue of the involvement of special services of a number of states, including Poland, in the operation to seize power in the Republic of Belarus using a color revolution scenario. I believe that the discussion of these matters at the level of inter-parliamentary structures already puts Poland in a rather unpleasant situation. There may be other explanations why they acted this way, but these explanations show Poland in an even more unpleasant light. So any documents, any discussions related to the Republic of Belarus will be flawed, since the necessary conditions have not been created for the participation of our delegation,” he said.
