PARIS, October 1. /TASS/. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) believes that Belarus should stop exploiting the border situation impacted by the influx of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, the organization’s statement reported on Friday.

In a resolution based on a report by Anne-Mari Virolainen (Co-chair of Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons) and adopted following an urgent debate, it requires to "stop the instrumentalization" of the current situation with migrants. The Assembly said the migration and asylum pressures at the border of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland had been "orchestrated by the Belarusian authorities in response to EU sanctions against Belarus imposed for harsh violations of human rights".

The parliamentarians also called on the authorities of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland "to provide access to asylum procedures, refrain from pushbacks into Belarus, and safeguard the rights of those seeking to enter their territory".

Since August, almost 10,000 migrants have attempted to illegally cross the Belarusian-Polish border. Some 1,200 illegal migrants have been taken into custody and housed at guarded centers in Poland.

The Polish authorities hold the Belarusian leadership responsible for what is happening, which, according to Warsaw, ships migrants to their country, and then sends them across the border to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in order to spark a migrant crisis in Europe.

At the end of May, Lukashenko stated that his country had served as a barrier to human trafficking to neighboring countries. However, considering the West’s ramped-up political pressure, Minsk has had second thoughts about continuing to block the flow.