I must say that today we are facing a lot of local crises and also global crises. I must say that we lack the type of leadership that you are talking about because especially after the big expansion of the European Union, I think that everybody was kind of complacent about the future development of the world in general. At least we have the bulwark of democracy in Europe, the biggest union of various shared values. But all of a sudden it started to collapse, and it started to collapse because of the complacency of the west in having a very soft reaction to the human rights abuses on the immediate borders of the west, by which I mean in the former Soviet Union.
This kind of a lack of strong and principled reaction created not one, not two, not three, but a group of countries that are very effectively co-operating with each other in the former Soviet Union and other parts of the world not only to calm the western efforts to strengthen democracy and values but also to attack. You must admit that the attacks sometimes are much more effective than the policy of the west to support the values.
I think today that we need this kind of leadership. I am a firm believer in values. I think that in recent years,realpolitik interests, for example, in my country of Belarus, are prevailing in too many cases over the values. The interests are prevailing over the values. That is eroding the fundamentals that we need to be restored today, and not only restored but strengthened. For me there is no question that the attitudes and our respect of human rights are the basic principles on which the west should build its relationship with this or that country.