MINSK, November 12. /TASS/. The Belarusian authorities are ready to take tough measures if the European Union moves to cite the United Nations Security Council's closed-door consultations on the migrant crisis along the country's western border in order to impose new sanctions on Minsk, Belarusian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Anatoly Glaz told TASS on Friday.
"If the EU moves to cite the event as justification for another package of sanctions, I would like to make it clear that Minsk is ready to take the toughest retaliatory measures," he pointed out. According to Glaz, it is perfectly clear that tensions on the border between Belarus and the EU stem not so much from the problems that 3,000 migrants can create but from the fact that "Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - Poland in particular - are benefiting from fueling the crisis." This is why, in Glaz's words, the consultations "were clearly orchestrated" and "none of the Security Council members outside the Western group supported those who initiated them and criticized" Belarus.
On November 12, the US, the UK and EU nations on the UN Security Council accused the Belarusian authorities of creating a migration crisis on the border with Poland. According to earlier reports, the EU is working on a fifth package of sanctions against Minsk that will not include sectoral economic restrictions but will target government officials and law enforcement officers. Air carriers allegedly involved in the delivery of migrants to the EU border may also be blacklisted.
Tensions sparked by migrants seeking to enter Poland, Lithuania and Latvia via Belarus exploded on November 8. Several thousand people arrived on the Belarusian-Polish border, some of them trying to cross the border by cutting barbed-wire fences. EU states claim that Minsk is deliberately escalating the crisis and are calling for sanctions. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in turn, blamed the situation on the Western countries whose actions forced people to flee their war-torn homelands.