Delegation on “milk problem” affronted and left Moscow

The chief sanitary officer of Russia Gennady Onishchenko refused to receive the Belarusian delegation headed by the deputy agriculture and food minister.

A decision to recall the delegation has been adopted, Belarusian TV company Stolichnoe televideniye informs.

“Onishchenko called into question authority of the Belarusian delegation,” Interfax quotes the news program.

According to the TV channel, the delegation “was waiting for a meeting till late at night”. The delegation included representatives of the Agriculture Ministry headed by the deputy minister Mikhail Savelyeu, the chief sanitary doctor of the Health Ministry of Belarus Valyantsina Kachan, representatives of the State Standards committee, manufacturers of milk products.

The TV channel took a phone interview of the head of the Belarusian delegation M. Savelyeu. “It’s total absurdness! All the questions were solved by us yesterday, and this issue (absence of the Belarusian delegation’s powers) is a new topic to put off the main one,” M. Savelyeu said.

As said by the deputy minister Mikhail Savelyeu, the meeting with the chief sanitary officer of Russia Gennady Onishchenko was to take place before the noon. However, nobody wanted to speak to the Belarusian delegation before the noon. Then, negotiators collected documents and went to the building of the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights.

However, they were not let in the building. As said by Mikhail Savelyeu, all the documents were prepared by the Belarusian side. Tat is why, as it was said on air of the evening new broadcast “Panarama” at the First National Channel, Savelyeu left the documents on the porch of the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights.

On June 17 in the comments left on the website of the Belarusian Embassy in Russia, the deputy minister reminded that it was the second visit of the Belarusian delegation to Moscow to solve the “milk problem”.

“We are not finding understanding with the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights. On the first time we have been waiting for three days for the head of the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights to receive us. And now, first we were received well, we defined the order of actions for the Belarusian goods deliveries to be started. We agreed to meet on June 16 and sign the necessary protocols. However, it was said on the morning that our delegation lacks authorities for some reason, though we have all the documents and powers. In the afternoon nobody from the Russian Agency for Health and Consumer Rights even answered our phone calls. We have come here, nobody’s here, and there is only one answer to our requests to meet with high-level officials: they are not available,” Savelyeu said.

As we have informed, the Agency for Health and Consumer Rights imposed a ban on import of 600 types of Belarusian dairy products on June 6 as Belarusian producers failed to execute documentation in accordance with Russian regulations taken effect in December 2008. The Agency for Health and Consumer Rights said later it banned supplies of 800 more types of Belarusian dairy products to some Russian provinces.

The ban fallowed a cooldown in Moscow-Minsk relations caused by Russia’s unwillingness to give the promised $500 million loan.