Belarus may withdraw application for entry into Council of Europe - Foreign Ministry

MINSK. May 18 (Interfax) - Belarus may withdraw its application for entry into the Council of Europe, press secretary for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Anatoly Glaz said.

"If the Council of Europe and the West continue their destructive course in regard to the Belarusian state, the Republic of Belarus will withdraw its application for entry into this body and will keep reviewing the remaining formats of relations with the Council of Europe," the ministry's press service quoted Glaz as saying on Thursday.

Interaction between Minsk and this organization "is practically frozen, and that did not happen at our initiative," Glaz said. He thinks that the Council of Europe "has completely turned into an obedient instrument for pressure on states unwelcome by Washington and Brussels."

The organization has stopped being what Belarus sought to enter 30 years ago, Glaz said. Belarus's application for entering into the Council of Europe was frozen in the 1990s.

A summit of the Council of Europe took place in Reykjavik on May 16-17, Glaz said. He denied "the thesis of Belarusian involvement in the alleged forcible displacement of Ukrainian children" voiced there.

Glaz called for stopping "politicization of the problem of rehabilitation of Ukrainian children" and said that Belarus had taken in children from countries hit by military, natural or manmade crises and disasters before and would continue to do so. Belarus has been taking in children from Ukraine, including Donbass, since 2016.

"We continued that practice in 2022 and 2023. [...] Temporary visits of children for rehabilitation in Belarus are organized in line with due legal procedures. All children arrive in and depart from Belarus legally, accompanied by adults, with all the necessary documents on hand. We do that in an open and transparent manner, including in cooperation with international organizations and funds, among them UNICEF," Glaz said.