Belarus regards Venezuela as strategic partner in Latin America, Alexander Lukashenko says

President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko plans to make the first official visit to Venezuela in December this year. On 4 December, the head of state held a meeting focused on the issues related to the forthcoming visit, BelTA has been told in the press service of the Belarusian leader.

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has already visited Belarus twice: in July 2006 and in June 2007. Alexander Lukashenko and Hugo Chavez have agreed to build strategic cooperation and identified priority areas of the bilateral relations.

Although lying at a great distance from each other, within a relatively short period of time Belarus and Venezuela have achieved substantial progress in various fields of interaction: many joint projects have been launched, highly beneficial for both Belarus and Venezuela.

The intensification of trade and economic interaction between Belarus and Venezuela has been possible largely due to the high level of the political dialogue, common objectives of the two countries in social policy, similar views on the world order and similar positions within the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Opening the meeting, the President said: “Our country must expand its presence in Venezuela, intensify all-round ties. The importance of the Venezuelan vector of our foreign policy lies, first of all, in the fact that it allows Belarus to consolidate its positions in the Latin American region”.

Political interaction must be amplified with the cooperation in trade, economic, scientific-technical, military-technical and humanitarian spheres, the head of state said.

Venezuela is the most developed country in Latin America, Alexander Lukashenko said. This country occupies the first place in that region in terms of the proven oil reserves, and comes 7th on the list of the biggest oil producers in the world. Venezuela also possesses big reserves of natural gas. It is possible that this December Belarus will start extracting oil in Venezuela.

Venezuela has given Belarus an opportunity to participate in large-scale investment projects, the President said.

Venezuela, he said, is one of the most promising markets in Latin America; therefore Belarus has good exports prospects. “Venezuela is prepared to buy our products. They need them,” said Alexander Lukashenko. He also stressed the importance of Venezuela as a re-exporter of Belarusian products to the other countries of that region.

Summing up the results of the meeting, Alexander Lukashenko stressed the need to intensify the efforts aimed at developing cooperation with Venezuela. “The demand for Belarusian products in Venezuela is now big. This is a country with huge financial resources. Many countries are showing interest in Venezuela today, but our advantage is that we started to work there earlier than others. The implementation in Venezuela of the outlined plans will make it possible for Belarus to gain profit and valuable experience of building up such large-scale activity abroad,” the President said.