Lithuanian parliament will cooperate only with democratically orientated Belarusian National Assembly, speaker says

The Lithuanian Seimas (parliament) will cooperate with the new Belarusian National Assembly provided it is democratically orientated, Seimas President Arturas Paulauskas told a group of Belarusian reporters in Vilnius on December 1. He noted that the Lithuanian parliament had adopted a critical resolution on Belarus’ recent parliamentary elections and national referendum, in which it called the campaigns “neither free nor fair.” “We believe that the new Belarusian parliament does not reflect the opinion of the people and cannot cooperate with it, but we will be watching closely developments,” he said. “If we see that Belarusian lawmakers are guided by democratic principles, we will change our stance.” Mr. Paulauskas said that the European Union “should pay more attention to Belarus” by employing positive means apart from sanctions. “As neighbors, we will always be pushing this idea in the European Parliament,” he said. “We are interested in the democratization of Belarus, but so far do not see any steps being made in this direction.” The fact that opposition candidates failed to win seats in the House of Representatives in the October elections does not testify to the weakness of the opposition forces, he said. “The opposition could have showed their worth very quickly if the authorities had given them the opportunity to work in a normal way,” he added.