There is no concept of "recognition of the election" in international practice. This was stated by Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergei Martynov in his interview to "Capital TV". "We must understand that international practice, including the legal aspect of this practice, has, generally, no concept of "recognition of the election." It is a common, everyday, so-called "kitchen" political cliche," he said.
«There is an organization (OSCE — Telegraf), which is mandated to evaluate elections and to say if they match the standards or not. But this is the elections’ assessment. But it’s up to a particular State to recognize them or not,» Minister of Foreign Affairs said, CTV reports.
According to him, now there is no country not recognizing Belarus. «They are working with us. They are all present in a certain form. And I do not expect anything to change in this regard. From our part, we expect that the OSCE and other observers to be simply objective. We don’t ask anything else,» the minister said.
He also said that Belarus, Russia and some other states «largely criticize the OSCE for its monitoring methods, including methods, built on stereotypes and patterns, that is prejudice.»
The Range of Easy Movement in Relations with Russia Exhausted, Martynov
The minister said that Belarus has recently been able to establish the systematic and in-depth consultations with the European Union on a number of important areas such as economics, finance, environment, standards, customs, settlement visa relations and so on.
At the same time, according to Sergei Martynov, integration and economic relations with Russia have reached that point where the range of easy motion reserve has already been exhausted. «Everything that can be done relatively easily, has already been done,» he said.
«Now we have reached a stage when it’s necessary to make very serious, far-reaching decisions with very serious economic consequences — both for Belarus and Russia. In this regard, it’s much harder to come to such decisions than in the previous period. We are moving towards these decisions together with Russia, but with Kazakhstan as well, which is also good because, paradoxically, it is sometimes easier for the three of us to agree than for the two, because it produces an effect of versatility. Therefore, these relations are not spoilt, we have just moved to much more complicated problems in these respect. I hope we will solve them,» Foreign Minister said.
In addition, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Belarus entered the market of 34 new countries for the last two years and is preparing to open an embassy in Brazil and Nigeria. As he says, the approach to foreign economic relations is that «we have to change the simple forms of commerce — import-export — into more complex forms of creation of joint ventures and presence on the markets through joint ventures, service and so forth.»
