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EU to consider suspending sanctions against Belarus next week

24 August 2015 10:58 (UTC +04:00)

"The decision of President [Alexander] Lukashenko on releasing jailed opposition leaders creates conditions for suspending the sanctions. This will be discussed on September 4-5," the diplomat said.

Some EU countries have called for suspending the sanctions against Minsk for at least a year.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Johannes Hahn, the commissioner for European neighborhood policy & enlargement negotiations, earlier said the prisoner release marked "important progress towards the improvement of relations between the EU and Belarus."

Lukashenko announced a decision on August 22 to pardon and free ex-presidential candidate Nikolay Statkevich and a number of other jailed opposition figures whom the EU has called "political prisoners."

Statkevich was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to six and a half years in jail for staging mass disorders in December that year after the presidential elections in Belarus.