The Department of State: Minsk’s Demand for Further Staff Cuts at Embassy in Minsk Is “Unwarranted and Unjustified”

Minsk’s demand that the United States further reduce the staff of its embassy in Minsk to seven is unwarranted and unjustified, Tom Casey, deputy spokesman of the US Department of State, said at Friday’s briefing.

“There has been an ongoing series of demands from the Government of Belarus regarding our Embassy there,” Mr. Casey said. “We believe this latest request, like several before it, is unwarranted and unjustified. We will certainly be continuing to discuss that issue with the Government of Belarus, but I’m aware of no plans to make such a drawdown of Embassy staff.”
The Belarusian foreign ministry’s spokesman, Andrey Papow, said a day earlier that Washington had been informed of the number of US diplomats that should leave Belarus and when they should do this.

The spokesman reiterated that Minsk demands lifting the US sanctions against Belarusian economic entities, which he said would be the “basis for the development of Belarusian-American relations.”

“I want to stress that the Belarusian side’s actions were of a retaliatory nature, and that they were completely adequate to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” he said. “As for the actions of the American side, which resorted to measures of unilateral economic pressure on our country, it is evident that the USA violated all possible and impossible international rules, from resolutions of the UN General Assembly to direct agreements between Belarus and the USA.”
Minsk announced earlier that week that it would reduce the number of staff members at its embassy in Washington and urged the United States to do the same.

Minsk wants the staff of the Belarusian embassy in the United States and the US embassy in Belarus to consist of the ambassador and six more diplomats, Deputy Foreign Minister Viktar Haysyonak said on Wednesday. According to him, some 10 officers at the Belarusian embassy in Washington would soon return to Minsk.

As the Belarusian foreign ministry explained, the decision was made because the US government had “repeatedly refused to abolish additional restrictive measures of an economic nature” against Belnaftakhim, as well as “considering the US administration’s consistent policy aimed at scaling down contacts with the Belarusian side.”

In November 2007, the US Treasury Department announced that any assets found in the USA that belong to Belnaftakhim should be frozen, as the Department had added Belnaftakhim to its list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. The resulting sanctions also barred US citizens from doing business with Belnaftakhim and its offices.

Minsk recalled its ambassador to the USA, Mikhail Khvastow, on March 7 "for consultations" after the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a statement with regard to the applicability of the sanctions.
The Belarusian foreign ministry emphatically recommended that US Ambassador Karen Stewart leave Belarus "for the same purpose." The ambassador went away after the Belarusian government had threatened to expel her in retaliation for the US sanctions.

Seventeen American officers of the US embassy in Minsk left Belarus in late March in pursuance of a request from the Belarusian authorities that wanted the embassy to cut its staff to the number that the Belarusian diplomatic mission in Washington has.

“It is necessary to equalize the levels of diplomatic presence on a parity basis,” which means that the USA’s diplomatic presence in Belarus should match that of Belarus in the United States, Mr. Papow said on March 20. “The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in particular Article 11 of this document, gives us such an opportunity in full measure. That is why this demand of the Belarusian side is well-founded,” he noted.

Article 11 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations reads:
1. In the absence of specific agreement as to the size of the mission, the receiving State may require that the size of a mission be kept within limits considered by it to be reasonable and normal, having regard to circumstances and conditions in the receiving State and to the needs of the particular mission.
2. The receiving State may equally, within similar bounds and on a nondiscriminatory basis, refuse to accept officials of a particular category.