Turkish minister cautioned Lukashenka against selling weapons to Asad?

Not only the cancellation of visas was the topic of the visit of Turkish Foreign Minister to Minsk, but also the shipments of Belarusian weapon to Syria.

A political observer Raman Jakauleuski stated that when commenting on the new international agreement on arms trade for charter97.org.

“The image of the Belarusian regime in the international arena gives a reason to suspect it of violating the arms trade sanctions. It has been repeatedly reported that Belarus sells military equipment to Sudan and Syria. As to the latter, I would remind, that the Foreign Minister of Turkey has recently been in Minsk, of the country, which is in the state of war with the regime of Asad. It is quite probable that the topic of the conversation was not only the officially states issue of the cancellation of the visa regime, but also the issue of arms shipments to Syria, to which Turkey, certainly, cannot be indifferent”, - the political observer believes.

He also noted that there has recently been an incident when the Turks landed a transport airplane, flying from Moscow with weapons for the Syrian dictator and also that it is exactly in Damascus that the Belarus’ embassy is the largest in the region in terms of the number of the personnel.

“The topic of the world’s weapons market and arms trade is very closed and there are no concrete numbers at our disposal. According to some data, a high-ranked official of the Belarusian MFA has recently visited the USA on the issue of the arms control, but we are so short of the actual information that we can only put forward hypotheses as to what exactly could happen there.

It is also explicable that Belarus abstained from voting on the adoption of a new international arms trade agreement. There is an officially signed agreement between the foreign offices in Minsk and Moscow on the coordination of actions and a concerted policy in the international arena. In this case it is an example of support to Russia.  In official statements Belarus will claim that it controls the embargoes on weapons, but the fact will remain a fact. Having abstained from voting, Belarusian stakeholders supported Russia’s position, which had a negative attitude to the agreement’s content”, - Raman Jakauleuski is sure.

We would remind that the international arms trade agreement threatens secret sale of arms and technologies to pariah countries.

The text of the agreement has been approved by the UN General Assembly on 2 April. It has been approved by 154 countries that is the vast majority. Only North Korea, Iran and Syria voted against. 23 countries abstained, among which were Belarus, Russia and China.