BELTA: Belarus president to attend One Belt, One Road summit in Beijing in May
MINSK, 4 May (BelTA) – I plan to take part in One Belt, One Road summit in Beijing in mid May, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said as he met with representatives of Chinese central and regional mass media, participants of the press tour of Belarus, on 4 May, BelTA has learned.
“The current press tour has been organized especially ahead of One Belt, One Road summit which Belarus is set to attend. The forum will consider issues of global importance,” said Alexander Lukashenko. The Belarusian head of state stressed that One Belt, One Road is a historical initiative which is reshaping the economic map of the world creating new points of growth.
The Belarusian head of state stressed that in the implementation of this initiative China is not going to impose its interests or launch any commercial expansion of the states. “China is coming as a friendly state, offering loans, investment, cutting-edge technologies to the countries which are going to make part of the Silk Road project,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
The Belarusian leader noted that representatives of the Chinese mass media had already visited the China-Belarus Industrial Park as part of the press tour. The park should become one of the hubs of the Silk Road Economic Belt. “It is no coincidence that Xi Jinping has named it a pearl of this large-scale project. Great Stone is an example of how China is reshaping the economic map of the world. China is coming to Belarus and together we are developing a huge industrial zone to attract in future the world's most advanced companies, first of all, from the People's Republic of China. Calculating possible revenue from the Great Stone project, we saw that Belarus was going to earn more than $50 billion on the export of the Park's products alone,” the Belarusian leader noted.
The President of Belarus also said that he is going to meet with his Chinese counterpart as part of his forthcoming visit to China. “We will discuss not only the issues on the international agenda. First of all, we will focus on the matters important for our bilateral cooperation in the trade, economic, investment, financial and humanitarian areas,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
The president added that it is not easy to host such a large-scale summit. Leaders of many states are expected to take part in it. Chinese President Xi Jinping will be busy with the preparations for the event as well. “When you are hosting events of the kind it always takes a lot of your time and effort. The Chinese president is expected to meet with the Belarusian president as part of the summit. This speaks a lot about our relations with your president and the relations between Belarus and China in general,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
