FROM MINSK TO DELHI: BELARUS EYES DEEPER TIES WITH INDIA IN IT, PHARMA, AND AGRI-TECH

India is a key regional player, Belarus fully supports Delhi's global role: Ambassador Mikhail Kasko

- Ambassador Mikhail Kasko

India's relations with Belarus have been traditionally warm and cordial. India was one of the first countries to recognize Belarus as an independent country in 1991. Both countries enjoy a comprehensive partnership.

In this freewheeling interview with Millennium Post, Ambassador of Belarus in India, Mikhail Kasko speaks about economic issues, readiness of Minsk to participate in the flagship programme of Make in India, promoting tourism and the need for boosting growth of trade, cultural exchanges and climate change. Here are edited excerpts:

Your Excellency, Belarus and India have long-standing diplomatic relations. Could you highlight the main milestones in this bilateral partnership over the past few years?

Diplomatic relations between our countries have been going on for more than two decades, and these relations have always been characterized as friendly and mutually beneficial.

If we talk about the key stages in the development of bilateral relations, it should be said that the leaders of our countries began to contact much earlier.

In 1985, the then Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi made his first visit to what was then Soviet Belarus. He visited a number of leading enterprises of the republic, attended the exhibition of achievements of the national economy, which was held in Minsk.

He also visited the Khatyn memorial complex dedicated to the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus and India managed to maintain the ties that existed at that time in the political and economic spheres, which later became the foundation for building the current effective mechanism of bilateral cooperation.