Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergei Martynov got his invitation to the annual Munich security conference rescinded. The conference will be held on February 4-6. This decision was made by permanent chairman of the conference Wolfgang Ischinger "to protest against the human rights situation in the authoritarian state."
Wolfgang Ischinger said that «one shouldn’t behave as if nothing had happened» in Belarus in the aftermath of December 19, reports the Belarusian service of Deutsche Welle.
However, an international forum will discuss a number of controversial issues of foreign and security policy on 47th Munich Conference on Security, considered the most important in Europe.
This year’s conference is expected to be attended by about 350 people, including 12 Heads of State and Government. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen are among them.
As Telegraf previously reported, the international community strongly condemned the Belarusian authorities for the dispersal of peaceful opposition protests in Minsk on December 19 and the mass arrests of its members. Thus, Poland announced the introduction of visa sanctions against President Alexander Lukashenko and several hundred officials. Similar sanctions may be adopted by all the European Union at the meeting of the EU foreign ministers on January 31.
