Montenegro Seeks Closer Ties With Belarus

Montenegro and Belarus will sign a five-year agreement on economic and security cooperation on the sidelines of this year's UN General Assembly session, which starts in New York on Wednesday.

Under the draft protocol, which BIRN has seen, the two countries' foreign ministries have agreed a model for a five-year cooperation, which was initiated by Belarus.

The protocol envisages that Montenegro and Belarus will hold regular consultations and consider possibilities for the establishment and expansion of "political, economic, cultural, security and technical" relations.

"Consultations will be held alternately in Podgorica and Minsk," the agreement says.

Montenegro, an EU and NATO candidate country, decided in 2012 to join EU sanctions against Belarus over rights abuses by the Minsk government, including an arms embargo against the former Soviet republic, a travel ban on Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and visa bans and asset freezes on around 200 people close to him.

In August, the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini announced that some non-member states had again aligned themselves with the latest changes to the EU's sanctions regimes on Belarus. The list includes Montenegro as well as Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Hezegovina and Serbia.  

Since gaining independence in 2006, Montenegro has not appeared keen to establish closer diplomatic relations with Belarus. Podgorica appointed a non-resident ambassador to Minsk in 2013.

But after the country's traditionally close relations with Russia cooled because Montenegro joined the Western sanctions against Moscow in 2014 over the crisis in Ukraine, Podgorica is now seeking new opportunities for economic cooperation and investment among the former Soviet...