MINSK, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday urged Europe to reconcile East and West.
Europe can and should set an example in resolving issues between East and West, the president said at the Minsk Dialogue Forum on Thursday.
Experts believe that the current situation is worse than the Cold War, Lukashenko said.
He said many of the old recipes for overcoming conflicts "often do not work, but new ones have not been worked out yet", no international problem (the Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, the DPRK, Iran) is really being resolved.
The dangerous rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and its allies in the 1970s-1980s was predictable and had a certain balance to it; both sides were using clear and understandable instruments to spread their geopolitical influence, he said.
Lukashenko also stressed Belarus's allied relations with Russia do not threaten Western countries.
"Our allied relations with Russia and orientation toward integration within the EAEU (the Eurasian Economic Union) do not encroach on European countries' interests in any way," he said.
The way Belarus is developing relations with the European Union and the United States is not at odds with the dynamism of its interaction in the East, Lukashenko said.
He stressed Belarus is interested in the mutual rapprochement of the Eurasian Economic Union and European Union. The president called for switching from "abstract conversations to concrete interaction."
