Lithuania may invoke NATO's Article 4, if the migration crisis on the Belarusian border further escalates, Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė said in an interview with CNN.
“We are discussing about this possibility [to trigger Article 4] and it really can happen when we have the worst scenario. Because Lukashenko and Belarusian regime, it is not a normal regime, it is undemocratic and criminal regime,” she said.
Read more: Migration crisis in Baltics and Poland
Article 4 of the NATO treaty calls for consultation over military matters when “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened”.
Bilotaitė also noted that the situation on Belarus' border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia was “not just a migration crisis, but a humanitarian crisis”.
She was pressed by CNN's Becky Anderson about the policy of pushing back migrants and preventing them from entering Lithuania and Poland.
“Interior minister, these are men, women and children, we saw these children being carried on the shoulders of men walking in freezing cold, being forced to return to Iraq. Is that what you and other colleagues in Europe hoped to see?” Anderson asked.
Lithuania is considering triggering @NATO Art. 4, says the country's Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite, in the face of a migrant crisis on the country's border with #Belarus -- This would start a consultation process with other member countries aiming to avoid military conflict. pic.twitter.com/e2WNf58kIY
— Becky Anderson (@BeckyCNN) November 16, 2021
Bilotaitė responded by claiming the people on the border were economic migrants rather than refugees.
“I would like to mention that these people are not asylum seekers, the biggest part of these people are coming to Belarus with tourist visas and the aim of these people is Western [European] countries, better economic conditions,” Bilotaitė said, stressing that the Belarusian government was using migrants as weapons.
Bilotaitė also said that Lithuania was providing “humanitarian supplies” for migrants turned away at the border when questioned by Anderson whether the EU needed to do more to help them rather than treating people as weapons in a confrontation.
Last Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw was in talks with Lithuania and Latvia on whether to ask for consultations under NATO's Article 4.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda subsequently commented that “NATO’s Article 4 is definitely a last resort measure, and we are definitely keeping it in our arsenal in case we have solid grounds”.
Over 4,200 irregular migrants have crossed into Lithuania from Belarus so far this year. Nearly 7,000 more have been turned away since early August.
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