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Nyaklyayew outlines his foreign policy vision

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, leader of the “Tell the Truth!” campaign, said that he would not make any hasty steps to withdraw from earlier agreements with Russia in the military and other spheres if elected president.

Close cooperation with Russia would remain a key priority, the presidential contender said at a news conference held in Minsk on October 28 to unveil his foreign policy doctrine.

“If we come to power, we won't start making any hasty steps to ruin existing agreements with Russia,” he said. “This concerns not only the economic, social and humanitarian spheres but also the military area. We don’t think that statements by certain opposition politicians that Belarus should withdraw from every possible military cooperation agreement with Russia are acceptable.”

Perhaps, the accords should be revised, Mr. Nyaklyayew said.

“But some of them are about nothing else but counterterrorism cooperation and air defense,” he said. “And it would be wrong to annul the relevant agreements automatically.”

Mr. Nyaklyayew said that some agreements with Russia in other spheres would be kept in place. "We've singled out from what is mostly empty talk and rubbish something that is truly useful for Belarus. There are few specific agreements there but some are important and cannot be ignored or scrapped at once," he stressed.

The presidential hopeful spoke against the restoration of controls at the Russian border, as well as emphasized the importance of agreements that entitle Belarusian and Russian nationals to equal employment and education rights and free healthcare on the territory of the other country. "This must be kept in place and included into a program that we called a concept of responsible neighborhood," he said.

Speaking about Belarus' relations with the European Union, Mr. Nyaklyayew suggested that they should be built from scratch.

He noted that that his team had examined all agreements between Belarus and the 27-nation bloc.

"It has turned out that we don't even have a partnership and cooperation agreement," he said. "All of the agreements currently in effect were concluded back in 1989, when Belarus was part of the Soviet Union. In 1995 there was an attempt to conclude such a treaty but it failed because all of the agreements were not ratified." //BelaPAN