Meeting with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed

  • 1

Belarus will always support the United Nations Organization, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he met with UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed on 21 February.

“We will be a pillar of strength for you, for all of us - the United Nations. You can rest assured of this. Not only because I really respect the current Secretary General or because the United Nations is the platform where we can talk openly about our problems. But because we all seek to eliminate the unequal development, to eradicate poverty, and to create a true multipolar world,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

The head of state expressed the hope that someday this multipolar world will be represented not by three to five states but all countries of the world. “Every person has the right to be in the center of this multipolar world. Europe must play the key part in addressing these complicated problems of today,” the President said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko welcomed the idea to hold the regional forum of national SDG coordinators in Minsk. In his words, this will provide an opportunity to discuss the main area of activity of all the UN states for the near future, which is the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “This most important area of our activity and you, as a representative of the most rapidly developing continent, understand it better than anyone else,” the head of state said.

“I will not talk about the things we did here, in Belarus, to make this meeting happen, to prove our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals. You may know about this very well, and our counterparts will tell you about this as well. We are firmly committed to this idea, as you are, because we are confident that the cause of all the troubles, including the biggest challenge – terrorism, is the uneven development of the states, which gives rise to poverty in the first place. We pursue the formula: provide the person with a job and he will never take a gun in his hands,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

The head of state also asked to convey the most sincere and kindest wishes to the UN secretary general. “I will be glad to meet with him once his and my schedules permit it. He is a very kind, warmhearted, and cordial person,” stressed the President.

Amina Mohammed, in turn, said that Belarus’ leadership in the United Nations is needed as never before.

“Your leadership is needed today as never before. The leadership and the voice for multipolarity, for the multilateral settlement of the problematic issues which Belarus raises in the international arena,” Amina Mohammed said.

he stressed that in the modern world there are too many conflicts, and they are very different, depending on the region where they are happening. “We categorically lack a tolerant attitude to different situations and manifestations,” the UN deputy secretary general said.