"You have to develop your relations to the West, because you are a bridge to the East. If you stop being a bridge to the East, you are not stepping up anymore. East makes you attractive," Malosse said at a meeting with authorities of Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, on Friday.
"If you have perspective of more cooperative Europe including Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and so on, you are in the center. So you have an excellent strategic economic position. If you close the border of Lithuania, you will be at the border of Europe," he said.
According to Malosse, Europe needs to keep a permanent dialogue with Belarus.
"I think that we have a task to have a permanent dialogue with economic and societal actors in Belarus. Our concern is that in Belarus we have something like 9 or 10 million Europeans very close to us. From history, from past, from everything. An we have to have a permanent and fruitful dialogue with them on all issues. (...) I think our task is to build bridge, not to cut the bridge," he said.
"We should have no new iron curtain to the East. If there is new iron curtain to the East, who will be punished for that? Lithuania," Malosse stressed.
Closer cooperation with its eastern neighbors that take part in the EU Eastern Partnership program is one of the priorities of the forthcoming Lithuanian EU Presidency in the second half of this year.
