President Lukashenko: Belarus will continue to keep at it

“Belarus is heavily pressurized from the outside using various forms and methods,” Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has said in his annual address to the National Assembly. According to Mr. Lukashenko, national security issues acquire special topicality at present. He thinks that developments in the former Yugoslavia testify to the fact that the potential military danger does not dwindle in the world. “Adopting by NATO of a strategic new concept, its expansion eastwards, creation of European rapid deployment forces have complicated the geopolitical position of the Republic of Belarus,” Mr. Lukashenko went on. In this connection, Mr. Lukashenko emphasized the importance of Belarus’s active participation in the development of the regional security, first of all, building on cooperation within the Russian-Belarussian Union and the CIS. Furthermore, Mr. Lukashenko called for the republic’s law-enforcement bodies to be on alert to prevent political provocation from the opposition. Of late, the extremists have tried to lean on workers’ collectives using “fraud and some difficulties of the country’s development.” The Belarussian President is determined to counter the “concerted pressure from abroad” aimed to force Belarus to “transform after a model which is alien to our people.”