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Lithuanian prime minister comments on Lukashenka’s angry outburst against Vilnius

Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s most recent angry outburst about Lithuania is a sign of coarse manners, Andrius Kubilius, prime minister of the Baltic country, said on Tuesday.

“We, of course, don’t respond to such uncivil statements,” Mr. Kubilius told Lithuanian Radio. “On the whole, one has to regret that this is not for the first time that we have to judge our neighbor by such reflections of coarse manners.”

Speaking on Monday, Mr. Lukashenka severely criticized Lithuania over its reaction to a recent Molotov cocktail attack on its embassy in Minsk, BelaPAN said.

Two unknown people hurled two bottles containing a flammable substance into the embassy’s compound and fled the scene late on November 6. No people were hurt in the attack. Some Lithuanian officials, including the foreign minister, condemned the attack as an act of terrorism.

Mr. Lukashenka said that the Russian embassy was targeted by a similar attack in August 2010.

He said that the perpetrators of the attack on the Russian embassy had been found and convicted. “Lithuania shouted loudly that they are political prisoners. And now that these bottles were thrown at their embassy, they describe it as terrorism. This is their policy, this is not even double standards, this is just a mean policy,” he told students and faculty at Belarusian State Economic University in Minsk.

Mr. Lukashenka said that Vilnius was still waiting for him to react to the incident. “And I’m waiting to hear what they will say about letting a Swedish plane cross their territory and enter the Belarusian airspace,” he said, referring to July’s incident where an aircraft piloted by Swedish citizens invaded Belarus’ airspace and dropped teddy bears on its territory in a pro-democracy stunt.