The U.S. is disappointed by the decision to freeze the joint projects with Belarus of exporting highly enriched uranium from the Republic, remaining there since Soviet times, said the official representative of the United States Department Heidi Bronco Fulton.
"We are disappointed by the announcement that made Belarus. Nevertheless, we hope that Belarus will perform the obligations to eliminate all of HEU", said Bronco Fulton. She called it "a responsible contribution to world security".
In addition, she also stressed, that the U.S. "continues to call for the immediate release without conditions of all political prisoners".
By adopting this decision, the ruling regime, in fact, does not punish the U.S., but itself. This opinion told to a correspondent of the site Tovarisch.online the political observer Roman Yakovlevsky.
He pointed out that "in spite of unpredictable behavior, which was repeatedly noted in the behavior of the official Minsk, still at least a small hope of the West on common sense remained. Therefore, the news of "freezing" the cooperation in such area as nuclear safety, leaves no place for even such a small hope, and that will certainly stimulate the pressure on Minsk."
The political observer convinced that the U.S. had not even thought to impose sanctions in this area of cooperation, affecting global nuclear security, because the whole world would not understand it, but in Minsk they ventured to make such an obviously short-sighted step.
R. Yakovlevsky reminds that "in December 2010 during the OSCE summit in Astana was the meeting with Sergei Martynov and Hillary Clinton, and when Belarus pledged to get rid of the existing uranium, this offered the challenge of assistance from the United States side and to ensure the energy security of Belarus."
According to the interlocutor of the site Tovarisch.online, Minsk in the project of its own nuclear power plant is guided by these considerations. "Now it will not. The U.S. has got a carte blanche for massive resistance to this project."
Besides, "also the participation of the official Minsk in the coming summit in 2012 in Seoul on Nuclear Safety becomes almost a zero like. By this sign one can note also a benefit to the national interests of Belarus itself from this decision of Minsk. Well, they simply didn't not know how and in which place "to bite" the U.S.", summed up Roman Yakovlevsky.
As it leaked out on Friday, the official Minsk has decided to freeze the projects, worked out jointly with the U.S., on highly enriched nuclear fuel in the framework of the Global Threat Reduction of the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as on the creation of MBA programs at the Belarusian State University. Such a solution, as reported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, was adopted in response to the new sanctions from the U.S.
