At Meeting with Diplomats Lukashenka Repeated Old Theses :: Charter'97 :: News

At an annual consultations with heads of diplomatic missions Alyaksandr Lukashenka has stated that Belarus is pursuing and would pursue a flexible foreign policy, but would not “cave in” to “democracy teachers”.

“As the head of the state I proceed from the idea that steep turns and abrupt turnabouts are unwelcome in the foreign policy. In today’s foreign policy we proceed from the principles of consistency, pragmatism and certainly, flexibility,” A. Lukashenka said. And the president underlined that “foreign policy should promptly react to changes around us, but to be flexible does not mean to bow down, or which is worse, to cave in either to the so-called “teachers of democracy”, or to somebody else”. “We have never done anything for encouraging patting on the shoulder from the West or from the East, in foreign or the more so in home policy. And we would not do that,” the president said.

According to A. Lukashenka, today Belarus has moved to a new level of foreign policy. “It has become an active subject of international relations. But not everybody likes that, as we are a prominent and significant state, a serious rival. Otherwise there would not be so much attention from the superpower US, and its allies and satellites,” the head of the state noted, saying that “other centres of power are taking an interest in us: the EU, China, India, not to speak of the brotherly Russia”.

A. Lukashenka has also underlined that “Belarus does not have and cannot have global geopolitical ambition”. “But today, at the new level of our state’s development, we should say that we have geopolitical interests”, the president continued. As said by Lukashenka, “in our foreign policy we are solving different issues to ensure security of the state and create favourable conditions for development of economy and people”. “Thus, the foreign policy is completely determined by real internal needs of the state,” A. Lukashenka underlined.