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EU ambassadors should return to Belarus within days, Slovak foreign minister says

Slovakia's Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said on Wednesday that European Union ambassadors should return to Belarus in "a matter of days."

Speaking to a group of Polish reporters in Brussels, the Slovak minister said that the European Union needed the ambassadors to do their work in Minsk and that the diplomats must not be involved in political disputes between the 27-nation bloc and Belarus.

According to Mr. Lajcak, although the ambassadors of EU member states were withdrawn from Minsk, the countries did not demand a reciprocal step from the Belarusian authorities. This was meant to demonstrate the European Union's reluctance to escalate the diplomatic row, he said.

Mr. Lajcak suggested that the less attention the media and politicians devoted to the ambassadors' return, the easier it would be for the EU to achieve its goals in Belarus.

All EU ambassadors left Belarus in February in an act of solidarity with Maira Mora, head of the European Union's Delegation to Belarus, and the Polish ambassador to Belarus, Leszek Szerepka, who had been told by the Belarusian authorities “to leave for their capitals to inform their chiefs of the Belarusian side’s firm stance that pressure and sanctions are unacceptable.”

Not a single EU ambassador has returned to Belarus so far.

Speaking on April 17, Uladzimir Makey, head of the Presidential Administration, said that the ambassadors would be allowed to return to Belarus after the EU displayed its readiness to lift its sanctions on the country's individuals and economic entities.

"The return of the ambassadors to Belarus will be possible when the European Union comes to realize the need for a conversation with Belarus on the abolition of the sanctions, and when the ambassadors themselves, if they do intend to come back, are ready to talk not in a language of blackmail and threats but in a language of dialogue as required by appropriate conventions on diplomatic relations," he said.

The Presidential Administration head said that "it's not us who ask but it's the European Union that asks us to allow the ambassadors to return to Belarus. "And not just asks but demands that and even threatens [us] with new sanctions," he said. //BelaPAN