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Belarus will not bow down to EU, Lukashenka says in interview with La Stampa journalists

Belarus is ready to do more for the European Union than the EU for Belarus, but Belarus will not bow down to the EU, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said in Wednesday’s interview with journalists representing Italy’s most influential daily newspaper La Stampa, BelaPAN said.

Excerpts of the interview were broadcast by Belarus’ national television channels on Wednesday night.

“Today we’re ready to do more for you than you for us. We’re ready, we have such an opportunity, but we have no intention to crawl on our knees and bow down to the European Union,” the Belarusian leader said.

“We aren’t in a situation that we have to run into the European Union with trembling knees or bodies,” Mr. Lukashenka said. “We’re offering you cooperation. If you have an interest in your center of Europe, if you have an interest in the Belarusian state, in the problems that we live with, please come. We’ll also come to you, and will cooperate. If you don’t have such an interest, no one will make you act in this direction. I realize this pretty well. It isn’t the first year I’ve been president. But I’ll represent my state in a proper manner like, by the way, your premier, Silvio Berlusconi, does.”

Mr. Lukashenka also insisted that there are “good relations” between Belarus and Russia. “There is no other country in the world with which we have such relations as we have with Russia,” he said. “There is not such a level of relations as the level of our relations with Russia, although there are enough problems, too.”

Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi is expected to pay a visit to Belarus on November 30.