Armenian Foreign Ministry summons Ambassador to Belarus for consultations

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YEREVAN, 13 June. /ARKA/. Armenian Ambassador to Belarus has been summoned to Yerevan for consultations, Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ani Badalyan said today./pp

Speaking in Parliament earlier on Thursday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he will never visit Belarus again as long as Alexander Lukashenko is its president./pp

He reiterated that Lukashenko had participated in and supported Azerbaijan's preparations for a 44-day offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, and wished victory for Azerbaijan.nbsp;nbsp;/pp

Should I go and discuss CSTO activities with the president of Belarus after this? Although I will have to do it in the EEU format, Pashinyan said./pp

He noted that Armenia's position on the CSTO will not change until Belarus withdraws from the CSTO or apologises in a way that is acceptable to the Armenian people./pp

During his visit to Azerbaijan in May this year, Belarusian President Lukashenko (Belarus is a member of the CSTO), according to local news agencies, said that before the 2020 war against Nagorno-Karabakh he had spoken to Azerbaijani President Aliyev and both concluded that Azerbaijan could win the war against the Armenians./pp

In a February interview, Pashinyan said Armenia had frozen its participation in the CSTO because the bloc had failed the country./pp

Since then, Armenian authorities have skipped all CSTO meetings, and the Yerevan government recently refused to contribute to the CSTO's general budget./p