9/29/20
French President Emmanuel Macron has promised Europe's help in mediating the political crisis in Belarus after meeting with opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Lithuania. "We will do our best as Europeans to help mediate," Macron told reporters in Vilnius on September 29 after the meeting, pledging "pragmatic" European support for the Belarusian people. He has called for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to handle mediation on Belarus, which has seen weeks of mass demonstrations triggered by a disputed August 9 presidential election. Tsikhanouskaya said the French president "promised us to do everything to help with negotiations [during] this political crisis in our country...and he will do everything to help to release all the political prisoners." Sources in Macron's office said the meeting at a hotel lasted 35 minutes, according to dpa.
Speaking to AFP, Tsikhanouskaya said, "We have received an invitation to speak before the French parliament and we have accepted it." Macron is the highest-profile Western leader to visit Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania amid a crackdown on protesters by long-ruling strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka following the presidential election. Under increasing pressure from the street and the West, Lukashenka has leaned on neighboring Russia for political and economic support. Lukashenka claims he won the vote, but the opposition has held mass rallies to protest the results, saying Tsikhanouskaya is the winner. Ahead of his three-day trip to Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, Macron said it was clear that Lukashenka "has to go" after 26 years in power. He also said he was impressed with the courage of the protesters. "The protests are not going to stop," the 38-year-old Tsikhanouskaya said in an interview with AFP, adding that Belarus "badly needs" a dialogue between government and opposition in order to ensure there is "no more blood."