Minsk has no incentives to meet Lithuania halfway on the Belarusian NPP issue

Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department gave comments to Radio Sputnik (Lithuanian editing) on the work of the Belarusian NPP.

In an interview with Sputnik Lithuania, Sergei Kondratiev, Senior expert at the Institute for Energy and Finance said, that Lithuania's position would be more understandable if it was initially set up to cooperate with BelNPP.

"Initially, the position of Lithuania is quite contradictory. On the one hand, Lithuania, especially in recent years, has spent a lot of efforts to oppose in every possible way the project of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. Since the project began to work Lithuania has been trying to maximize the admission of European experts on nuclear security, and in this regard, this position would be much more constructive if Lithuania were set for cooperation from the very beginning," the expert noted.

Kondratiev said, that the Belarusian side is no less than the others interested in the safety of its own nuclear power plant.

“Now it is not clear, who initiated the cancellation of the visit to the Belarusian nuclear power plant, but I would not attach such importance to this visit, because there are national regulatory bodies that are responsible for ensuring the reliability and monitoring the operation of the nuclear power plant, and there is the IAEA, there is cooperation with Euratom. The Belarusian side is no less than Lithuania interested in the Belarusian NPP operating stably," the expert said.

According to Kondratiev, the Belarusian side has little incentive to follow the Lithuanian requirements.

“Even if Lithuania took a step towards and agreed to open the Baltic market for Belarusian electricity, it would mean that Lithuania could make some demands, put forward conditions, and then the position would be justified. Now Lithuania, on the one hand, demands to ban activities, on the other hand, insists on the admission of European specialists. Such a contradictory position may lead to the fact that cooperation with participation of Lithuanian experts will be quite difficult. I do not see a big incentive from the Belarusian side to meet the Lithuanian requirements, even if from the Lithuanian side, they look reasonable," the expert said.