Belarus FM Sergei Aleinik thanks India for supporting its SCO membership

Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Aleinik thanked India for supporting its application for full-fledged membership at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), while pressing for a just, fair and multi-polar world order. FM Aleinik was on a three-day visit to India from March 11-13, during which he also held a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. He was addressing a media briefing on Wednesday.

Speaking on his meeting with Jaishankar, Aleinik said, "We are sharing views towards creating a more just, fair, multipolar world order, and we are sharing the same views on the principles of international relations, so the core principles are equality of states and, the balance of interests of each and every country." "We also touched upon our cooperation in SCO, as well as BRICS, and we expressed our appreciation for Indian support extended to our application for full-fledged membership in SCO," he added.

The Belarus FM appreciated the fact that India was the first country to ratify the memorandum on Balarus' accession to SCO. He said the two leaders also discussed Balarus' BRICS membership The two leaders also discussed regional and global issues, and affirmed to work towards further enhancing bilateral cooperation between India and Belarus to 'strategic partnership' level, he added.

"We touched upon, BRICS because Belarus also made application to BRICS, to the full-fledged...we look forward to positive consideration by the growing number of member states of BRICS since the last summit in Johannesburg," Aleinik said. "We agreed to continue our bilateral consultation on this sense. We also had an exchange of views on regional and global issues, and generally so we had very constructive and productive meeting which sealed friendship between our countries, and We are planning, of course, to further enhance our bilateral cooperation towards the strategic partnership level," he added.

The Belarus FM said that their SCO accession in in the final stage and they are hopeful of complete accession in the coming months. Regarding BRICS membership, he said that they are expecting some positive developments in the forthcoming summit in Astana, Kazakhstan in October this year. Earlier on Tuesday, EAM Jaishankar held discussions with Belarusian counterpart Sergei Aleinik on bilateral ties, including development partnerships in the field of defence. The two leaders delved into various facets encompassing political, trade, and economic dimensions. (ANI)