(Washington) US President Joe Biden on Friday expressed his “great concern” over the crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus, after similar remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We have expressed our concern to Russia […] and Belarus, ”he told reporters, before leaving to spend the weekend in the presidential residence of Camp David.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is accused by the West of orchestrating a continuous arrival of migrants at the border with Poland, a member of the European Union, as a response to Western sanctions.
PHOTO CHRISTOPHE ENA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris
So far, he can count on the support of his main ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A little earlier the vice-president Kamala Harris, on official trip to Paris, had considered that Belarus was “engaged in a very worrying activity”.
Washington regularly criticizes Lukashenko’s regime, and the United States is among the countries that have taken sanctions against a range of Belarusian figures and entities.
Joe Biden had received at the White House at the end of July the Belarusian opponent in exile Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
The EU on Friday welcomed “progress” in stemming the arrival of migrants, notably after Turkey announced that Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis would no longer be allowed to embark for Belarus from its airports.
The Iraqi government told him that it was working to register Iraqi migrants stranded at the border between Belarus and Poland who wanted to return “voluntarily”.