Uralkali director's arrest in Minsk discredits Belarusian govt - Russian ambassador
MINSK. Aug 27 (Interfax) - The arrest of Vladislav Baumgertner, the head of the Belarusian Potash Company's supervisory board and general director of Uralkali, should be viewed as discrediting the Belarusian authorities, says Russia's Ambassador to Belarus Alexander Surikov.
"This is something discrediting the Belarusian authorities, which cannot be understood," Surikov said in an interview with correspondents of Russian TV channels accredited in Minsk on Tuesday.
Baumgertner visited Minsk at the Belarusian prime minister's invitation and met with him, after which he was planning to go back to Moscow but was arrested at the Minsk airport, Surikov said.
At the present time, Baumgertner is being held at the Belarusian State Security Committee's (KGB) detention facility, he said.
"I don't know such things happening in international practice when some government invites someone and then law enforcement agencies detain this person. Perhaps an invitation is a kind of guarantee of security, and the law enforcement agencies' actions in this situation are not very correct to their own authorities," Surikov said.
"Perhaps such incidents do happen sometimes in international practice, but they happen extremely rarely," he said.