Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 28 July (BelTA) – Belarus is determined to gradually establish its foothold in new countries and regions of the world, Foreign Minister of Belarus Vladimir Makei said in an interview to the STV channel, BelTA has learnt.

“Ambassadors, heads of diplomatic missions have recently met with the head of state and discussed the matter in earnest. The President has set clear-cut and concrete goals to explore new markets, promote our products in non-CIS states and boost export to a number of new destinations. I would not want to go into details, but I can say that this year and next year we are up to a great number of high-level and highest-level visits. We are determined to explore the “blanks” on the world map. We are not going just to walk through this or that region, but we want to set a foothold in these areas,” the Foreign Minister said.

Vladimir Makei noted that the partnership with Venezuela is a great example of Belarus’ all-round cooperation with a foreign country. “The same should be done with other states. The President of Belarus has set a task to establish such “footholds” in each region and on each continent. We are now working on this task,” he said.

According to the Foreign Minister, at present Belarus is busy promoting all-round cooperation with Ecuador, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, the Republic of South Africa and many other countries. “This list can be continued. Therefore, I think we will have many more partners like Venezuela in the future,” the Belarusian Foreign Minister is convinced.

Speaking about the work of diplomats, Vladimir Makei pointed to the high requirements to diplomats: “Today I would call a diplomat “a versatile soldier” if we use a military term, because our diplomatic missions abroad are pretty small and consist of two or three specialists in some remote countries. This means that diplomats should handle multiple tasks. These are political cooperation, trade, economy, humanitarian ties, military and technical cooperation and many other areas of bilateral and multilateral cooperation”.

“As for the macroeconomics, the task of the Foreign Ministry is to unite efforts of all interested parties to work out a clear strategy to promote Belarusian products on foreign markets,” Vladimir Makei said.