MINSK, September 12. /TASS/. Belarus is open to everyone who comes in peace and does not understand why Europe seeks to raise the iron curtain again, President Alexander Lukashenko said during a meeting with representatives of various nationalities living in the republic.

"We are completely open and will remain open to everyone who comes to us with pure motives, with peace. Therefore, it's difficult for Belarusians to understand what drives the European elites in their desire to isolate themselves and raise the iron curtain again," the BelTA agency quoted him as saying. "Realizing that this is a path to nowhere, we take unexpected but natural and understandable steps in response: we open the borders and directly address the peoples of Europe," Lukashenko said. "Fortunately, they hear us," the president added.

Lukashenko noted that at times it seems as though people coming to the country "leave their mutual quarrels, reproaches, and grudges at the border crossings." "Representatives of 156 nationalities work, create families, and raise children in Belarus in peace and harmony, in the spirit of good-neighborliness. All of them become our people here, even mine, as I often say — Russians, Ukrainians, Poles. It has been this way, it is this way, and it will always be this way," the Belarusian leader said.

"It doesn't matter to me where one was born. I appreciate decency, kindness, diligence in people first of all. Belarusians are deprived of a sense of national superiority, as they know what it means to fight for their culture and faith," Lukashenko emphasized.