CIS states not yet ready to come with collective response to western sanctions imposed against individual member states – Petrishenko

<p> MINSK, Sep 24 - PrimePress. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries are not yet ready for a collective response to Western sanctions against individual member states of the organization. This follows from the remarks made by Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Igor Petrishenko at a press conference on 24 September following a meeting of the CIS Economic Council, the government’s press service reports. </p> <p>   </p> <p> “Right now we are intensifying our interaction; we are going to respond to these sanctions with our integration agenda. Maybe, some time later we will decide that we need to respond more effectively and with better coordination, including to these challenges,” said Petrishenko. </p> <p>   </p> <p> The deputy prime minister noted that the topic of the Western sanctions was raised at the session by the Belarusian side. “We called on our Commonwealth partners to step up efforts to implement the measures we had agreed on, removing and lowering possible barriers to the movement of goods,” he said. </p> <p>   </p> <p> “We have discussed in detail the sanctions imposed on the CIS countries by the collective West. We have come to the conclusion that despite a more than 25% increase in trade within the CIS in the current period, the unjustified sanctions of the collective West have yet taken their toll. They really hamper to a certain extent the foreign trade of the Commonwealth countries,” Igor Petrishenko said. </p> <p>   </p> <p> He emphasized that the West does not observe international standards concerning migrants. “I told members of the CIS Economic Council that standards concerning the observation of migrants' rights are only declared but in real life and in practice we see a different picture: no standards and no international commitments are absolutely honoured by the collective West,” Igor Petrishenko said. “We see how migrants in need of aid are dumped at the Belarusian border. Strictly honouring its international commitments, Belarus provides full assistance. Even without taking into account international commitments but only the human dimension we provide medical aid and any other kind of aid.” </p> <p>   </p> <p> In his words, members of the CIS Economic Council were told that Western complaints about Belarus' involvement in the problem of migrants were unjustified. “I mean the migration crisis that the collective West has provoked: migrants from the countries the West has allegedly tried to put in order are rushing in droves into European countries. Respectively we remarked that CIS charter bodies – the CIS Foreign Ministers Council, the CIS council of heads of migration agencies – should keep an eye on the matter among other things. And certainly concerted actions should be taken within the framework of the CIS Council of Border Guard Commanders,” said Petrishenko. </p> <p>   </p> <p> As previously reported, the European Union imposed sanctions against major sectors of the Belarusian economy since 25 June 2021, and on 9 August the US, the UK and Canada imposed sectoral sanctions. Earlier, the EU imposed three more parcels of sanctions, which it justified by the escalation of human rights violations in Belarus after the August 2020 presidential election. The overall sanctions list includes 166 individuals and 15 organizations and companies. A fifth package of sanctions against Belarus in connection with the migration crisis at the EU border is the pipeline. End </p> <p>   </p>

2021-09-25

Primepress