Open lectures about Council of Europe expected to be held at CoE information point in Minsk this fal

    Open lectures about the Council of Europe are expected to be held at the organization's information point in Minsk this fall.Delivered by CoE experts, the lectures will focus on the organization's structure, work and achievements, Konstantin Troussevitch, head of the central division of the Council of Europe's directorate general of democracy and political affairs, told a group of Belarusian reporters in Strasbourg on June 22.

There are also plans for the information point to host an event against the death penalty in October, Mr. Troussevitch said. "We'll talk about this with Belarusian partners insofar as it is possible, above all, with the foreign ministry, understanding that the issue of the death penalty is very sensitive in Belarus," he said.

It is early to evaluate the efficiency of the information point, Mr. Troussevitch said. "We've just started our work and drawing up documents for programs and developing a website," he said. The Council of Europe has programs that "coincide with Belarus' interests," Mr. Troussevitch said. He cited the examples of programs aimed at protecting children and combating trafficking in human beings.

The conditions for the implementation of foreign programs in Belarus are rather difficult, Mr. Troussevitch said. "We have to submit a very detailed plan of what we want to do, how many copies of some material we need to print out, for example," he noted. "This plan then has to be authorized by ministries. This process is highly bureaucratized."

The information point is not a political office of the Council of Europe, Mr. Troussevitch stressed. "The point should not carry political overtones," he said. "Above all, this is a source of information about the Council of Europe."

The information point was opened at Belarusian State University in Minsk on June 8 in the presence of Maud de Boer Buquicchio, deputy secretary general of the Council of Europe, and Samuel Zbogar, Slovenia’s foreign minister who currently chairs the CoE Committee of Ministers. //BelaPAN