Possible Belarus forces aided migrants cross into EU: Prez

{ ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO } BELARUS PRESIDENT I think that’s absolutely possible. We’re Slavs. We have hearts.

LONDON: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said it was “absolutely possible” his forces had helped migrants cross into Poland but denied they had been invited, the BBC reported.

“I think that’s absolutely possible. We’re Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany,” Lukashenko told the BBC in an interview.

“Maybe someone helped them. I won’t even look into this,” he said.

But Lukashenko denied inviting thousands in to provoke a border crisis, the BBC said.

“I told them I’m not going to detain migrants on the border, hold them at the border, and if they keep coming from now on I still won’t stop them, because they’re not coming to my country, they’re going to yours,” he said.

The number of migrants trying to force their way into Poland from Belarus fell again Friday after an apparent change in tack by Minsk that could help calm a crisis that has escalated into a major East-West confrontation.

The Polish Border Guard said on Twitter that there were 195 attempts to cross the frontier on Friday, down from 250 on Thursday and 501 the day before, though Warsaw has warned that the migrant crisis was far from over.

Europe accuses Belarus of flying in thousands of people from the Middle East and pushing them to cross into the EU, which has been at odds with Lukashenko since a disputed election last year.

Belarus, which denies fomenting the crisis, cleared a migrant camp near the border on Thursday and started to repatriate some people to Iraq, but Poland said on Friday that Minsk was still trucking hundreds of migrants to the frontier.