MFA Press Secretary Andrei Savinykh replies to the reporters' questions during the press briefing held on October 18, 2012
18 October 2012
18/10/2012
Question: Which actions of the West countries hamper the normalization of relations of Belarus and the West from the point of view of the Belarusian side?
Answer: First of all, we can’t but mention the well-known double standards that are used by the West in order to assess the situation in our country. Against this background, the selectivity of EU judgments is obvious and creates serious problems.
Second, the differences in approaches to the development of the civil society in Belarus constitute a systemic problem. We fully agree with the EU on the necessity of the civil society and democratic traditions formation.
We clearly understand that we need time and united public environment based on confidence and major social groups’ interests harmonization.
This is the way, the process took place in Western countries.
Unfortunately, Western political circles reject the graduality of this process. They demand to implement this standards instantly, but they ignore economic and social shocks and disproportions that will inevitably arise in case this process is artificially pushed on.
This conclusion is proved by the experience in many countries. Artificial social experiments have never led to positive results. This thesis is fully recognized by Western academic circles and is kept silent or distorted by western politicians.
It is a serious problem. It makes us think that human rights topic is used by the West to bring pressure on our countries in favour of their political and economic interests. Consequently, a problem of confidence arises.
Finally, other “irritants” exit as well, and I would not minimize their importance.
For example, at the moment our relations with Sweden and partly European Union have become harder to a certain extend after the Swedish aircraft intentionally violated air space of our country. And this action is a crime according to International law. We sent proper requests on rendering legal assistance to the Swedish authorities but did not receive the answers.
The situation looks strange. The representatives of the EU make judgments on actions of foreign governments very quickly if they think that they do not conform to their principles. The situation with the Swedish plane is obvious – a crime is committed. But there is no answer. Western Governments keep silence. It looks like Western countries encourage their citizens to commit crimes on the territory of other countries under cover of politically correct slogans. How shall we understand that? Is it possible to speak about such a phenomenon as Western fundamentalism in this situation?
We need answers to these questions. In any situation, the Belarusian side has the full right to wait for apologies, at least. And we are going to demand the answer to our request made under International law.
In addition, there is a number of problem situations connected, for example, with the creation of the single International security architecture based on the principle that “proper security can’t be realized to the detriment of the neighbour’s security”, and so on.
So, both sides have a number of claims. But it is not the main issue. What is valid that it is possible to solve them by means of negotiations and constructive interaction only. I think we shall pay attention to this first.
