Paris, Aug. 21, (dpa/GNA) – French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday warned against any aggressive Russian intervention in neighbouring Belarus, saying relations between the EU and Russia were at stake.
Large protests have broken out in Belarus since President Alexander Lukashenko claimed a landslide re-election in an August 9 vote that has been condemned as unfair by the opposition and the EU.
Speaking alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was visiting his Mediterranean coastal retreat of Bregancon for talks, Macron said he, Merkel and European Council President Charles Michel had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin several times about the issue.
They were “convinced that stability, and the possibility of a relationship between the European Union and Russia, depend on this issue too,” Macron said.
Macron warned against any repeat of the situation in the Ukraine, where the toppling in 2014 of a pro-Russian president was followed by pro-Russian rebellions in the east of the country and the Russian occupation of the Crimea region.
Putin had said he was open to an EU proposal for mediation by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), but that Lukashenko was against the idea, Macron said.
The French and German leaders meanwhile called for an investigation of the apparent poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who was in a coma on Thursday after being taken ill on a domestic flight.
France was ready to provide medical assistance or grant Navalny asylum, Macron said.
Merkel and Macron also called for stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, amid tensions between Greece and Turkey about the right to prospect for oil and natural gas.
The two insisted on respect for the “sovereignty” of European Union countries. Greece and the EU say that Turkish drilling activity in disputed areas is illegal, a claim rejected by Ankara.
Merkel, who in recent days has been trying to mediate in the dispute, urged Turkey and Greece to seek a peaceful diplomatic solution.
“We need stability there and not tension,” she said.
Greece and Turkey have wide overlapping claims for their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the Mediterranean.
The dispute has been heated up by Turkey’s new drilling activities, as well as an agreement last year between Ankara and war-torn Libya’s weak UN-backed government about EEZ boundaries.
Macron, who has taken a more assertive stance including sending warships to join in Greek naval exercises, said Paris and Berlin had “complementary” approaches.
Diplomacy not backed up by a military presence was not sustainable, but military power without diplomacy “only leads to escalation,” he said.
The two leaders also discussed the coronavirus crisis.
Macron said France and Germany now had broadly the same strategy, based on prevention, testing, tracing and isolation.
He argued that new outbreaks should not lead to closing borders between EU countries again, as long as clusters of the virus were dealt with consistently.
“It serves no purpose, if we have a cluster here [at Bregancon], to close all of France’s borders,” he insisted. “Too often we have reacted in this way.”
On Mali, where a military coup on Tuesday led to the arrest and forced resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Macron said it was not up to France to “substitute itself for Malian sovereignty or the Malian people.”
France has some 5,100 troops deployed on a mission against jihadists in the Sahel region, including in Mali.
The coup leaders have said they are willing to continue cooperating with the French mission.
Macron said France had condemned the coup, and he repeated his call for Keita to be released – though he did not call for his return to power.
Power should be handed over to civilians as soon as possible, and a “rapid democratic transition” should take place, he said.
For the sake of the Malian people, France sought stability for the country and the continuation of “the fight against terrorism,” Macron added.
GNA