Martynau not allowed visiting Prague

The head of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry has not been invited for a meeting of Foreign Affairs ministers of the Visegrad Group and the Eastern Partnership countries, which is to be held in Prague on March 4.

Journalists have been informed about that by Petr Mareš, the Special Envoy for the Eastern Partnership from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic on February 21 at a press-conference in Minsk.

He has not sounded the conditions on which Martynau could be invited to Prague, but he specified: “The both sides know what should be done for that to happen.”

The Czech Ambassador informed that he was in Minsk on a two-week visit, during which he met with representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Culture and Education, the Belarusian State University and the National Academy of Sciences.

In particular, Mr. Mareš met with deputy chairman of the Main Directorate on Europe and the chief of the department of all-European cooperation of the Foreign Affairs Ministry Raman Ramanouski (Roma Romanovsky).

“As usual at the meetings we have touched upon the issues which are called problems in our relations – that is generally accepted values. But this topic had not been expanded,” Mr. Mareš said.

Answering a clarification-seeking question of BelaPAN, whether the issue of political prisoners had been brought up during the talks, the Special Envoy replied in the negative.

At the same time he underlined that the position of the Czech Republic and the EU on this issue had been articulated long ago and it remains unchanged: “Release of political prisoners is the first step towards cooperation between the EU and Belarus.”

Speaking about the current state of relations between Belarus and the EU, Petr Mareš has described them by the word “a deadlock”. “We can overcome the deadlock only by efforts of the two countries, and it seems to us that our hand for cooperation had already been extended, now we are waiting for Minsk’s hand,” the envoy stressed.

At the same time Mr. Mareš noted that Belarus is very important for the Czech Republic, and continuation of the country’s participation in the Eastern Partnership is considered to be one of the most important questions for the Czech Republic.

“Belarus is a European country, it was with Europe almost all its history, and now it is torn between East and West,” Mr. Mareš said. “The most difficult thing in the current situation is to find a balance. It would be easier to abandon Belarus in isolation, but we do not want that. We should not break off communications completely, as we know there is only one capital (Moscow – BelaPAN), which would be able to use this situation, and who would have enough means for that.”