Belarus’ Interests in Latin America :: Charter'97 :: News

On Friday in Moscow there will end another joint meeting of the Belarusian-Russian intergovernmental commission on the military-technical cooperation. Meantime, in Minsk there will be held consultations between the Ministries of foreign affairs of Belarus and Russia, where the sides will discuss the issues of cooperation with Latin America. They will also work out the mechanism of interaction in lobbying and promoting the interests of Belarus and Russia in Latin America. The issues, raised simultaneously in Minsk and Moscow, have pretty much in common. Arms trade is perhaps Belarus’ only interest in the Latin American market.

Belarus’ greatest success at the Latin American market was achieved back in 1998 with Peru purchasing from Belarus eight MiG-29 jets. However, after the regime of Alberto Fuhimori had been toppled, those MiGs got into an epicenter of scandal.

Then it also turned out that the sales of MiGs had been carried out without the consent of their manufacturers in Russia, which is why Russians refused to provide their technical maintenance and replace spare parts. Peru sought to find some other way of solving that problem, for which it even opened its embassy building in Minsk, near the “Pushkinskaya” metro station. Up until now this embassy reminds more of a secret object.

The meetings in Minsk and Moscow are designed to put an end to the conflict of interests between Russia and Belarus, such as in the case of the MiGs’ sales to Peru.

Belarus has only one embassy in Latin America, that is in Argentina. When the office had just been opened Argentina was considered to be Latin America’s most affluent country, now being rocked by an economic crisis. Minsk planned to sell there its agricultural machinery, particularly the “Belarus” tractors.