English

Lukashenka leaves for Belgrade

Alyaksandr Lukashenka left for a state visit to Serbia on Wednesday afternoon, reported the press office of the Belarusian leader.

On June 12, Mr. Lukashenka is expected to have a face-to-face meeting with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and then take part in delegation-level talks, the press office said.

On the same day Mr. Lukashenka is scheduled to meet with Patriarch Irinej of the Orthodox Church in Serbia.

A Belarusian-Serbian business forum and a business matchmaking session are expected to take place in Belgrade within the framework of Mr. Lukashenka's visit, the press office said.

According to the press office, the expansion of trade and economic cooperation between Belarus and Serbia remains a priority in relations between the two countries.

Mr. Lukashenka paid state visits to Serbia in 1998, 1999 and 2009. Mr. Nikolic paid a two-day state visit to Belarus in March 2013.

In 2012, Serbia was one of the eight countries in Europe that joined the European Union's economic sanctions against Belarus and supported the EU's travel bans imposed on several Belarusian officials, including Mr. Lukashenka.

In an interview given to Serbia's newspaper and broadcasting company on June 9, Mr. Lukashenka said that Belarus and Serbia should build an economic basis for more dynamic cooperation.

"We should build a trade and economic skeleton around which all our cooperation will revolve," the Belarusian government's news agency BelTA quoted him as saying. "That means we should find three to four powerful, good areas, and not only in trade." Mr. Lukashenka called for the establishment of joint companies and said that bilateral trade totaled almost $200 million in 2013, four times as much as in 2009 when the countries signed a free trade deal.

Noting that he understood Serbia's intention to join the European Union, Mr. Lukashenka suggested that solutions to the country's economic problems such as unemployment could lie eastward of the 28-nation bloc.

He also noted that the EU should not oppose Serbia's close economic ties with Belarus and Russia if it really wished the Balkan country well.

"At the same time we are well aware that you live de facto in the European Union today, you are surrounded by the European community. What harm will it do if you build normal relations with them, not to the detriment of our country, Russia, Ukraine and other states?" he wondered.

Mr. Lukashenka urged Serbia to choose a policy that would not "disappoint either the East or the West." //BelaPAN