MINSK. April 9 (Interfax) - Belarus has suggested boosting trade and economic cooperation with Iraq and offered to sell arms to the Arab country.
At a meeting in Minsk on Thursday with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko called for a new era in relations between the two countries and said "trade, economic and military technological cooperation may be the foundation" for such relations.
"We stand ready for building our relations along those lines," Belarusian state media quoted Lukashenko as saying.
"A stable Iraq is what our interests in Iraq chiefly amount to. We want the Iraqi people to have a stable life, we want people there to feel that they live in a genuinely rich country and that these riches belong to the Iraqi people," the Belarusian leader said.