Israeli Foreign Minister meets Ahmadinejad’s friend

On June 4 the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman held talks with Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Belarusian Foreign Minister.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka offered Israel to act as an intermediary in normalizing relations of official Minsk with the West, and primarily with the US. In this way he realized his recent wrathful appeals to his own government to stop licking Russia’s boots.

“We would be thankful if your personal contribution and contribution of Israel would contribute to normalization of relations not only with Europe, but with the US as well,” he stated.

However, he omit his last year’s statement which almost incite a diplomatic scandal between Israel and Belarus, that “Jews has made Babrujsk dirty”.

In his turn, after the meeting with Lukashenka and Foreign Affairs Minister Syarhei Martynau, at the press-conference to Belarusian journalists Avigdor Lieberman touched upon the topic of Belarusian-Iranian relations.

“This topic is very sensitive to us, and first of all from the moral point of view,” Lieberman said. He underlined that Israel finds all attempts of Iran to rewrite history, including the history of the Second World War, and Holocaust denial by this country, unacceptable.

“Iran is a threat for stability in the world. Militants, who act in our country, are trained in Iran. It’s our point of view, and I think that we are to reach understanding in that,” the minister said.

Speaking about development of bilateral relations of Israel and Belarus, Lieberman underlined that cultural relations are developing “very well”, but political and economic ties fall behind.

“The coming years should be dedicated to economic upsurge in our relations. We discussed possibilities for such an upsurge during our talks,” Mr Lieberman said. He emphasized that this autumn he hopes to meet with the head of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus, this time in Israel.

As we have informed, in the late April 2009 during the visit to Minsk the head of the judicial power of Iran Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Alyaksandr Lukashenka offered Iran to enliven trade and economic relations and implement the agreements reached earlier. Lukashenka stated: “Belarus has chosen Iran as its key partner in this region”.

“We are happy that Iranian leadership made advances to us, and we want our cooperation to grow and expand”.

As informed by DEBKA analytical website which covers issues of military policy in the Middle East, arms trade to be carried out through Belarus in the direction Iran-Syria. According to the information of the website, military sources in Moscow have confirmed that talks on the Iskander-M sale to Tehran have gone through, and negotiations are ongoing for Iran and Syria for another transaction: the sale of Russia's advanced S-300 anti-air anti-missile multi-targeting shield systems as well with Belarus as a front.