Belarusian Foreign Ministry and PACE delegation haven’t found shared vision

The delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe remain at odds over how Belarus could return to the PACE.

“We plan reinstating of Belarus’ status in June at the PACE session in Paris,” said Chairperson of the PACE Political Affairs Committee Göran Lindblad. He underlined that in order to solve this problem participation of the opposition in the parliamentary delegation of Belarus is necessary.

Enrolling oppositionists as members of the delegation of the Belarusian parliament to the PACE is a key issue discussed during the visit of the delegation to Minsk, as said by G. Lindblad. “We will find a way to enlist the opposition,” he said.

On their part, the head of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Syarhei Martynau commented this statement saying that “the parliamentary delegation of the Republic of Belarus could be nothing else but a parliamentary delegation of the Republic of Belarus. It is our point of view”.

G. Lindblad expressed doubt that the variant of reinstating the status for the Belarusian delegation without oppositional members, would be supported by the PACE vote.

Answering the question about prospects of the membership in the Council of Europe for Belarus, the Belarusian Foreign Minister noted that the application for reinstatement of a special guest status hadn’t been considered yet.

The head of the PACE delegation expressed a hope that “in the future Belarus would become a full fledged member of the Council of Europe”. At the same time, G. Lindblad observed that at this stage Belarus falls short of the PACE requirements.