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Belarus will agree to host nuclear arms, if Poland or Lithuania do so - Lukashenko

He also remarked that plans for the protection of Belarus had been drafted and there was an understanding of what extra military hardware would be necessary in the near future

MINSK, February 27. /TASS/. Minsk will address Russa with an invitation to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, if the United States deploys them in Poland and Lithuania, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday.

"I had a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday. He starting asking questions about the referendum, but in the context of the deployment of nuclear weapons. I am acquainted with him, and I said: "Emmanuel, if it were necessary to deploy nuclear weapons, we would be able to do so under the current Constitution. There are no hindrances to us in this respect… If the United States, or France, which is a nuclear power too, moves nuclear weapons to Poland or to Lithuania close to our borders, I will be unable to do the same on my own. I do not have any such weapons. But I will tell President Vladimir Putin I would like to have back the nuclear weapons that I had agreed to give away without any preconditions," Lukashenko said after voting in a referendum on the revised Constitution.

He also remarked that plans for the protection of Belarus had been drafted and there was an understanding of what extra military hardware would be necessary in the near future.

"Putin and I will reach an agreement and we will redeploy extra weapons capable of inflicting a damage serious enough to cause the Poles and Lithuanians lose the wish to go to war with us," Lukashenko added.

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