Landsbergis proposes that Belarusian opposition set up representation in Lithuania

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis proposed on Friday that the Belarusian opposition's Coordination Council open an information bureau that could receive some recognition from the Lithuanian government.

Such Belarusian representation could have a status similar to that of Lithuanian information bureaux that operated abroad during the Soviet occupation period, Landsbergis said after Friday's meeting with Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

"Such representation of the people of Belarus would not only have non-governmental status, but perhaps the government would look for ways to recognize it as an official information bureau, or whatever it might be, that could have a higher status than just an NGO office," the minister told reporters.

"Our proposal was to consider establishing the Coordination Council's bureau in Lithuania, but we agreed that we would come back to this issue," he added.