Events

MINSK, 4 July (BelTA) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA) supported Belarus’ amendments to the draft resolutions of the OSCE PA General Committees and supplementary items at its summer session in Tbilisi, BelTA learnt from the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus.

“Belarusian MPs took part in the plenary session and meetings of three OSCE PA General Committees: on Political Affairs and Security; on Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and Environment; on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions. The Assembly supported a number of important Belarusian amendments to the draft resolutions of the OSCE PA General Committees and supplementary items,” the House of Representatives explained.

Among the adopted documents is the resolution suggested by Ukraine on the 30^th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. In the document the OSCE PA members note that 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, its lessons are still being learned and this year’s anniversary reminds everyone about the enormous responsibility towards current and future generations to ensure that accidents like Chernobyl never happen again. The resolution stresses the need to maintain Chernobyl recovery efforts at the national and international levels to mitigate the health, environmental, social, and economic consequences of the disaster, as well as to facilitate restoration and development of the affected areas. The document also emphasizes the need for additional assistance by the international community to maintain and operate structures built within the closed “exclusion zone” and unconditional resettlement zone.

As part of the session Belarusian MPs met with OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva, and also heads and members of parliamentary delegations of Austria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, the United States, Tajikistan, Ukraine, France, the Czech republic, Sweden and Switzerland.

A parliamentary delegation of Belarus led by Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives Viktor Guminsky is taking part in the 25^th session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Tbilisi on 1-5 July. On 1 July the Standing Committee took a unanimous decision to hold the 26^th annual session of the OSCE PA in Minsk on 5-9 July 2017.