SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq will investigate the alleged smuggling of Iraqi migrants into EU member Lithuania via Belarus, the country’s foreign minister said.
The Iraqi government will launch an investigation into “the plan to smuggle Iraqis into Europe”, minister Fuad Hussein said at a joint press conference with his Lithuanian counterpart Gabrielius Landsbergis, who visited Baghdad on Thursday.
“We will not accept smugglers in our society,” Hussein said. “It’s our duty to protect our citizens, whether they be inside or outside the country.”
On July 8, the two ministers agreed in a telephone call to “seek opportunities for cooperation in the field of illegal migration, as the number of Iraqi migrants trying to cross Lithuanian-Belarussian border illegally had soared during the previous months,” the Lithuanian foreign ministry said in a statement.
They also agreed to continued the talks in Baghdad.
Belarussian opposition media charge the influx of migrants, a hot button issue for European governments, was a retaliatory move by autocrat Alexander Lukashenko following EU sanctions against his regime, according to AFP.
“Our neighbor is falsely using Iraqi people to pressure my country and the European Union… We feel Iraqis are being promised an easy trip to Europe and they end up in the forest,” AFP cited Landsbergis as saying.
“They were lied to [by people smugglers] and spent a lot of money… There’s a mutual need to stop this network of illegal migration,” he added.
