Bulgaria recalls ambassador from Belarus
Bulgaria is recalling its ambassador to Belarus for consultations, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva said on October 8, according to a report by Bulgarian National Radio.
Ambassador Georgi Vassilev handed a note from the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Belarusian ministry giving notice of the decision.
A similar move has been made by other European Union countries, in solidarity with Poland and Lithuania, which Minsk has asked to reduce the size of their diplomatic missions.
Zaharieva made the announcement while attending the GLOBSEC conference in Bratislava.
During the conference, Zaharieva held talks with Belarussian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Zaharieva reiterated her call on the Minsk authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and all those detained during the peaceful protests, as well as to organise and hold fair elections.
In a
message on Twitter after meeting Tikhanovskaya, Zaharieva said: “I
have expressed my support for the Belarusian people in their fight
for democracy, justice and freedom. People have the right to decide
their own future!”
The talks came about two months after
the presidential election in Belarus which official results showed as
having produced 80 per cent of the vote for incumbent Alexander
Lukashenko, with the election denounced by international observers as
neither free nor fair.
The EU of which Bulgaria is a member has rejected the election as falsified and has said that the new mandate claimed by Lukashenko lacked any democratic legitimacy.
(Photo of Tikhanovskaya and Zaharieva on October 8 via Zaharieva’s Twitter feed)
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