Belarus wants Russia, NATO to have open dialogue — top diplomat

WARSAW, October 10. /TASS/. Belarus wants to Russia and NATO to have an open and sincere dialogue, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makey said on Monday.

"We would like to see an open, transparent and sincere dialogue between NATO and Russia," he said at a joint news conference with his Polish counterpart Witold Waszczykowski. "Regrettably, so far there is no such dialogue between the geopolitical players, between the United States, NATO and Russia."

"Dialogue is needed to openly discuss the existing problems in our relations," he said. "We are categorically against the use of force and military means to solve problems."

According to the Belarusian top diplomat, his country negatively assesses the developments in the region as it thinks that deployment of additional military contingents in no way promotes security. "We would not like these development entail the formation of new division lines," he said.

Waszczykowski, in turn, said that NATO wants to maintain various channels for dialogue with Russia and hopes it would finally begin it as Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate entails incidents.

NATO contingents in Poland and Baltic countries

Makey went on to say that Belarus sees a certain threat in NATO’s strengthening its eastern borders and is looking at likewise strengthening its armed forces.

"We don’t welcome deployment of NATO contingents in Poland and the Baltic countries. But we cannot prevent it, so we are trying to see the logic of our partners. We don’t want to think that NATO is plotting any aggression against Belarus," he said. However, in his words, Minsk is looking at enhancing combat capacities of its armed forces. "We don’t think that what is going on poses any direct military threat to Belarus but we think it is a challenge, so we ponder on how to adequately respond to these developments," the Belarusian top diplomat said.