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Belarusian Foreign Ministry says Lithuania, Poland have reduce diplomatic staff in Minsk

Earlier, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said that Vilnius was not going to reduce the diplomatic staff in Belarus in response to the recommendation of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/. The proposals of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus to reduce the diplomatic personnel of Lithuania and Poland in the republic are binding, press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Anatoly Glaz said on Saturday.

"First, the proposals we made are exclusively within the sovereign rights of Belarus, and no one was obliged, and, in fact, was not going to discuss them with the Lithuanian side," he said, adding "It means that such proposals are compulsory for the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs".

Earlier, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry that Vilnius was not going to reduce the diplomatic staff in Belarus in response to the recommendation of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry voiced on Friday.

Glaz said on Friday that the ambassadors of Belarus in Poland and Lithuania have been recalled to Minsk for consultations starting from October 5, and Warsaw and Vilnius have been advised to do the same. In addition, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry recommended that by October 9 Lithuania reduces the composition of its diplomatic missions in Belarus from 25 to 14 employees, and Poland - from 50 to 18 diplomats. The representative of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry motivated this proposal by the "unambiguously destructive" activities of Lithuania and Poland in relation to Belarus. The number of the diplomatic staff of these two countries in Belarus should be reduced on an equal footing to the number of Belarusian diplomats working in Lithuania and Poland.

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