Lukashenka: “Both Belarus and Ukraine squeak like pigs today”

The Belarusian ruler has commented on the swine flu outbreak with death cases in an outrageously cynical way.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka believes that the situation with swine flu in the world, as well as in Belarus and Ukraine, had been intentionally provoked by pharmaceutical companies.

“It is a usual provocation of pharmaceutical companies. Their ambitions and desire to earn money on people’s misfortune,” Lukashenka said in Kyiv airport Borispol when he arrived on the official visit to Ukraine, Interfax informs.

Answering journalists’ questions about whether the leader of the Belarusian state whether he had fear to go to Ukraine, Lukashenka said: “What should I fear? One should calm down and live it through”. “To my mind the whole world is squealing likes pigs today. Belarus and Ukraine are not exception,” the Belarusian leader said.

“As far as I know, we have much less pneumonia cases this year as compared to the last year. As far as I know, the situation is the same in Ukraine,” the Belarusian leader said.

Speaking about bilateral Belarusian-Ukrainian relations, A. Lukashenka said: “Me and Viktor (Yushchenko) have long been considering these issues including the border and the Eastern Partnership joint projects,” the President said.

Answering the question concerning the state border issue, in particular ratification of an agreement on that, A. Lukashenka stated: “We have never had problems with the Ukrainian border, and do not have them now either”. Everything here will be all right,” the Belarusian leader added.

As charter97.org website informed already, the main unsolved issue in the relations of Belarus and Ukraine is ratification of the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. An agreement on the state border between Ukraine and Belarus was ratified by the Ukrainian side and still hasn’t been ratified by Belarus. Belarus linked ratification of the agreement with fixing financial obligations of Ukraine to Belarus, which formed after 1991 as a result of abandonment of mutual accounts on Soviet rubles.

In 2003 Ukraine and Belarus signed a bilateral protocol under which financial obligations of Ukraine of $134 mln were defined. In November 2003 Ukraine offered Belarus to pay 80% of the indebtedness by building facilities at the borders and building border crossings.