MFA: Belarus maintains investment and humanitarian ties with Middle East

Belarus cooperates with the countries of the Middle East in two main areas: credit and investment, humanitarian, Yuri Nikolaichik, Head of the Africa and Middle East Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, said in a new episode of BelTA's YouTube project "After the Fact: Lukashenko's Decisions".

According to him, the cooperation of Belarus with the countries of the Middle East "has been developing well", although this region is very heterogeneous.

For example, an important component of interaction with the Gulf states (the UAE, Qatar) is credit and investment cooperation. “A number of big investment projects have already been implemented. In particular the Qatari hotel complex Sokol has been built near the football arena [in Minsk]. Work is currently underway on a very large investment project Northern Waterfront. which involves the creation of a smart city [a microdistrict in the Belarusian capital]. This will spur the demand for our information technologies and will give an additional impetus to our IT sector," Yuri Nikolaichik said.

Belarus has established active humanitarian cooperation with countries such as Syria. "In Syria, the humanitarian dimension is important. We regularly provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian side, political support for the territorial integrity and independence of Syria within the framework of international organizations. Belarus hosts Syrian children on recuperation holidays on a regular basis,” Yuri Nikolaichik said. He recalled that over the past five years, groups of children from Syria regularly came to Belarus for recuperation purposes. In 2022 Belarus hosted about 80 people. During a visit of Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko to Syria in the autumn of 2022, an agreement was reached to increase the number of such groups.