Lukashenka: Belarus wants West to recognize parliamentary elections

Belarus wants the West to recognize this month’s parliamentary elections, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said in an interview with Britain’s Financial Times and Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 18.

“If you say that the parliamentary elections are so important for you, then we have opened the country for you completely: come, look, observe whether the pre-election period, early voting and the vote itself are in compliance with our laws,” the presidential press office quoted him as saying.

Mr. Lukashenka stressed that a new lineup of the House of Representatives would depend on the will of the Belarusian people. “My main task and role in these elections are to ensure that it is the people that determines the face of this parliament,” he said.

Mr. Lukashenka noted that Belarus always sought to have good relations with Europe. “In my first days as president I clearly determined the country’s foreign policy strategy, proceeding from the fact that it should be a multi-vector one,” he was quoted as saying.

Describing Belarus as the geographic center of Europe, Mr. Lukashenka said that the Belarusians are a “friendly, peaceful and hard-working” people. “That’s why the Belarusians have never wanted any worsening of relations with our neighbors,” he said.

The Belarusian leader reportedly noted that Minsk was reluctant to maintain contacts with the European Union through “the iron curtain that the West has built on the border with Belarus.” “We want to have contacts with you in all spheres: from science to the most complicated issues of relations between states,” he said.

During the interview Mr. Lukashenka answered some two dozen questions focusing on relations with the European Union, the United States and Russia, international politics, economic problems, the parliamentary elections, and other topics, according to the press office.

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