“It is almost impossible to say something meaningful in three minutes. Due to the bureaucratic regulation of speech by the UN Secretariat, I will have to limit myself to a few sentences,” the head of state said.
Heads of state are encouraged to limit their national statements to three minutes at the World Leaders Climate Action Summit.
Aleksandr Lukashenko explained his position in a brief interview with journalists after the speech. He praised the organization of the summit, hosted by Azerbaijan this year. “It is the only thing that can be assessed positively. It is very expensive, however,” he said.
Asked about his overall impression of the summit, the president said: “Very bad. I had to cut my speech into theses, because the bureaucracy of the UN Secretariat makes everything useless. What can you say in three minutes? Everyone reports on how great they are. But in fact it has gotten worse. I named three wars that pollute the atmosphere. Houthis are destroyed there for unknown reasons. There is a war in the Middle East (there are possibilities of other countries to be involved) and there is a war in Ukraine. I have named only the major ones. There are more than 50 ongoing conflicts today. This pollutes the atmosphere in the first place. I spoke about it in Dubai (at the previous summit a year ago).
“Who are the biggest manufacturers? The Anglo-Saxons. Where are they? They are not here today. Where is Mr. [French President Emmanuel] Macron, who was so proud of this agenda, the Paris Agreement? Where is he? He is not even here today. They treat it with disregard. This [the summit] simply turns into another idle talk,” the Belarusian leader added.
The head of state was also asked whether he believed it was possible to stop wars. “The reality says the opposite. That is why I do not believe it is possible,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
