TALLINN, November 17. /TASS/. Estonia’s Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets claims that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has promised the European Union to put an end to the migration crisis in exchange for his recognition and the lifting of sanctions.
He wants the sanctions to be lifted and to be recognized as the head of state, the ERR portal quotes Liimets as saying.
On the same day, German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said that Germany did not recognize Lukashenko as Belarus' legitimate president, but believed that talks with him were necessary to provide humanitarian assistance to the refugees.
Earlier, Lukashenko said after the November 15 telephone conversation with Germany’s acting chancellor, Angela Merkel he put forward proposals for settling the situation on the Belarusian-Polish border.
The migration crisis on the Belarusian borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants began to flock in since the beginning of this year, went into high gear on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border on the Belarusian side and tried to cross into Poland. In an attempt to storm the border they broke a barbed wire fence. The EU countries have blamed Minsk for the intentional escalation of the crisis and called for more sanctions. Lukashenko said that in this situation the responsibility rested squarely on the Western countries, whose policies had forced people to flee from war.