{"id":500932,"date":"2025-12-09T10:15:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T07:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=500932"},"modified":"2025-12-09T12:10:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:10:06","slug":"belarus-says-it-offered-lithuania-talks-on-the-sidelines-of-osce-ministerial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/belarus-says-it-offered-lithuania-talks-on-the-sidelines-of-osce-ministerial","title":{"rendered":"Belarus Says It Offered Lithuania Talks On The Sidelines Of OSCE Ministerial"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Belarus\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister <strong>Igor Sekreta<\/strong>\u00a0stated that Minsk had proposed holding consultations with Lithuania on the margins of the annual OSCE Ministerial Council. According to him, both delegations were present in Skopje at deputy-minister level, yet Vilnius declined the opportunity.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWe persistently invited our Lithuanian partners to use this chance and sit down at the negotiating table to discuss all the issues that have accumulated on the bilateral agenda. Even though the Finnish OSCE Chairmanship strongly encouraged Lithuania to accept its assistance in organising such a meeting, the Lithuanian side did not agree to the contact,\u201d<\/i> Sekreta said, as quoted by the Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n<p>He argued that, in Lithuania\u2019s political discourse, any contact with Belarus at the MFA level is portrayed as a defeat.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cAnyone who regularly reads the Lithuanian press can draw one conclusion: for some reason, any political-level contact with Belarus is seen in Lithuania as a loss.<br \/>\nPerhaps this is because the authorities in Vilnius \u2014 first of all the MFA \u2014 are not interested in resolving problems of ordinary citizens, carriers, tourists, ordinary people whom the government should serve. Even complicated issues are resolved at the diplomatic and political level \u2014 and this is stipulated in international treaties between Belarus and Lithuania. These are not only logistics or the return of trucks; these are matters of border functioning, humanitarian issues, transit and logistics. There was plenty to discuss, and we were ready for such a conversation,\u201d<\/i> he said.<\/p>\n<p>Sekreta expressed hope that a more pragmatic view will prevail in Lithuania\u2019s sectoral ministries \u2014 infrastructure, transport, interior \u2014 enabling such a contact to take place.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWe are ready for serious and substantive work, not for a single<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belarus\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Sekreta\u00a0stated that Minsk had proposed holding consultations with Lithuania on the margins of the annual OSCE Ministerial Council. According to him, both delegations were present in Skopje at deputy-minister level, yet Vilnius declined the opportunity. \u201cWe persistently invited our Lithuanian partners to use this chance and sit down at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":500931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6937e773bce4f.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Belarus Says It Offered Lithuania Talks On The Sidelines Of OSCE Ministerial"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news"],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}