Belarusian FM: It is important to end neocolonial dependence on ‘golden billion' countries

No one wants to put up with either financial, military, or any other types of pressure and diktat. It is important for all to end the neocolonial dependence on the countries of the “golden billion”, Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Aleinik said in an interview with BelTA while commenting on the results of the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement Coordinating Bureau in Baku.

On the sidelines of the meeting, the Belarusian minister held more than 15 meetings with the foreign ministers of various countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East to discuss both the bilateral agenda and the modern world order.

"It would be a mistake to assume that after the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, the situation will return to normal. The sentiments during the meeting clearly demonstrated that for the NAM member countries there is no alternative to a just multipolar world order," Sergei Aleinik emphasized. “This civilizational process is irreversible. No one wants to put up with financial, military, or any other kind of pressure and diktat anymore. Some large countries spoke about this directly and transparently during our talks."

"It is important for everyone to end the neo-colonial dependence on the countries of the ‘golden billion', to create new effective formats of interaction that are not controlled by the West, transform economies, move away from raw material exports, and to industrialize," the minister added.


At the same time, he acknowledged that the current model of the Non-Aligned Movement reflects a whole palette of diverse views and positions of states, sometimes contradictory to each other. "And that's okay. This is exactly the right model of multilateral diplomacy - a dialogue, an attempt to understand each other's concerns and find compromises while taking into account the interests of everyone as much as possible,” Sergei Aleinik noted. “This, if you like, is a model of liberal democracy in an international format. This model strikingly differs from the heavy-handed discipline of the Western bloc where there is one hegemon or ‘the Brussels obkom' and all others who act as told even to the detriment of their countries and people.”

"There is no idyll inside the NAM," Sergei Aleinik added. "However, according to its basic principles - non-interference in internal affairs, rejection of unilateral pressure, inadmissibility of neocolonialism, unacceptability of selective approaches, and so on - NAM is in solidarity and acts with one voice."