BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

22/05/2008

Belarus and Iran 'understand each other' - Lukashenko

MINSK, May 22 (RIA Novosti) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday during a meeting with Iran's Minister of Industries and Mining in the former Soviet republic's capital of Minsk that the two countries had smooth and transparent relations.

"We understand each other, we have neither reservations, nor problems in bilateral relations," Lukashenko told Ali Akbar Mehrabian.

Lukashenko also said that the bilateral trade figure of $80 million in 2007 between Belarus and the Islamic Republic had great potential for growth, calling the current level, "laughable."

Mehrabian passed on a written message from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said: "President Ahmadinejad has emphasized more than once that we should develop relations with countries like Belarus."

The Iranian minister and his Belarusian counterpart had previously had two days of talks, which the former called "fruitful and intensive".

The two countries are also united by tensions with the U.S.

Iran's controversial nuclear program led to U.S. President George Bush refusing late last year to rule out military action against Teheran, despite a report by the country's intelligence community which suggested that the Islamic Republic had halted attempts to create a nuclear bomb in 2003. Iran says it needs the program to produce power for civilian use.

The U.S. has accused the Belarus president of clamping down on dissent, stifling the media and rigging elections. Lukashenko, who was re-elected to a third term in 2006, has been blacklisted from entering the U.S. and the EU.

Tensions between the U.S. and Belarus heightened after Washington imposed sanctions last November against Belarus's state-controlled petrochemical company Belneftekhim and froze the assets of its U.S. subsidiary, demanding the release of "political prisoners".

Source:

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080522/108109075.html

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