«Billion more, billion less…»

• 13.10.2007, 11:31

Aliaksandr Lukashenka on the press conference to Russian journalists refused to speak about the arms trade contract with Venezuela because of secrecy: “I can’t tell everything”. And added: “I myself don’t know everything. Billion more, billion less – I am out of the picture”.

Indeed what small money for the only Belarusian oligarch. But why then was he begging for a loan from Russia?

But Lukashenka didn’t deny his military cooperation with Venezuela. “We have no secret issues in the cooperation with Venezuela”, - he said. According to him, Hugo Chávez during his visit was very interested in Belarusian weapon, and Lukashenka said him: “OK, we’ll help you to create military forces”, the UC P site running.

According to the official statistics, the trade volume with Venezuela doesn’t exceed 1 % of the whole sales volume of Belarus. So it comes that the arms sales in the mentioned volumes are not official.