Lukashenka warns against outside interference in settlement of conflicts

Alyaksandr Lukashenka warned on Thursday that post-Soviet countries should settle their conflicts without the involvement of other forces.

"I would like very much the problems that we have to be solved by ourselves," Mr. Lukashenka said while meeting with the security council secretaries representing the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

"[They should be solved] at the negotiating table in Minsk, Moscow, in Yerevan, in other cities in CSTO countries. There should be no influence from other states, groups, round tables. Moreover, we can solve these problems in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Transnistria and in Ukraine. These are our problems. We should settle them without foreign politburos and interference."

Mr. Lukashenka also commented on U.S. State Secretary Rex Tillerson's June 14 remark that Ukraine and Russia could agree on an end to fighting in the Donbas region outside the so-called Minsk agreements.

"They have started hinting that they can do without the Minsk format [of peace talks], find some other means of settling the Ukraine conflict," the presidential press office quoted him as saying. "Of course they can. But it's always harder to begin from scratch than to continue a good cause."

In an apparent dig at Washington, Mr. Lukashenka said that the Minsk agreements were "attacked by those states that should have come to the negotiating table and joined this format."

Mr. Tillerson said at a congressional hearing that Washington wanted "sufficient flexibility to achieve the Minsk objectives." "It is very possible that the government of Ukraine and the government of Russia could come to a satisfactory resolution through some structure other than Minsk," the state secretary told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"My caution is I wouldn't want to have ourselves handcuffed to Minsk if it turns out the parties decide to settle this through another, a different, agreement," he said.

The Minsk peace agreement, brokered by France and Germany and signed by Russia and Ukraine in the Belarusian capital in February 2015, calls for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line and constitutional reform to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.